BROOKLYN COLLEGE–Melina Giakoumis has spent the last five years researching the response sea stars have to climate change as she travels all across the east coast region of North America, collecting sea star DNA samples. The CUNY Graduate Center student is a PhD candidate in the ecology and evolutionary biology subprogram, who has been interested in ocean life since the very beginning.
“I have always loved the outdoors and especially the ocean. My dad likes to fish, so we spent lots of weekends on his boat,” Giakoumis told The Vanguard. “Also, my family comes from Greece and they are all fishermen there, so I kind of grew up hearing and seeing for myself about these changes that were happening in the ocean, and I sort of got interested in climate change.”
