Knauss legislative fellowships in Congress help build careers — and they're fun and educational. See our video and fact sheet for details.
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Current Graduate Fellows
Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship
Fellowship at:
NOAA Office of the Under SecretaryCool Facts:
Jessica Diaz is a 2024 Knauss Executive Fellow at NOAA in the Office of the Under Secretary/NOAA Administrator. In this position, she is a member of the Under Secretary's Infrastructure team that oversees the implementation and organization of ~$6B for NOAA under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and Inflation Reduction Act investments.
Fellowship at:
NOAA Fisheries Public Affairs TeamCool Facts:
Paulina Huanca-Valenzuela is a 2024 Knauss Fellow with NOAA Fisheries, the agency responsible for stewardship of the nation's ocean resources and their habitat. She supports efforts to highlight NOAA Fisheries' work in the press, including responding to media inquiries, developing messaging, and writing press releases.
Fellowship at:
NOAA, Ocean ExplorationCool Facts:
Carol Kim is a Knauss Policy Fellow with NOAA Ocean Exploration. Her research has focused on microbial communities in restored salt marshes, microbial community interactions with cable bacteria, and microbial carbon sources driving arsenic release in Bangladesh aquifers.
Fellowship at:
NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, Climate Program OfficeCool Facts:
Aliya Mejias serves an executive Knauss Fellow with the Climate Program Office's Climate Adaptation Partnerships team, formerly the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) program, at NOAA. She'll support sustained, collaborative relationships that help communities build lasting and equitable climate resilience.
Fellowship at:
U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public WorksCool Facts:
Cassandra Worthington is a 2024 Knauss Legislative Fellow placed with the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. She graduated with a master's degree from the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy.Competitive Graduate Research Fellowship
Fellowship at:
University of Maryland, College ParkProject Title:
Sperm Quality Characterization of Male Mummichog (Fundulus heteroclitus) in Response to Legacy Urban Contaminants from the Anacostia RiverCool Facts:
Sabine Malik is a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, College Park studying the impacts of urban aquatic pollution on the reproductive health of the male mummichog, an estuarine fish species. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, baking, antiquing, and spending time with her cat, Bijou.
Fellowship at:
Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental ScienceProject Title:
Developing a habitat model for mysids, an important link in Chesapeake Bay food websCool Facts:
Nina Santos is a Ph.D. student at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. For her dissertation, she is focused on small shrimp-like crustaceans called mysids – an understudied yet important part of many estuarine and coastal food webs.NMFS-Sea Grant Joint Fellowships
Fellowship at:
Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental ScienceProject Title:
Evaluating the Performance of Spatially Explicit Population Models to Estimate Abundance of Chesapeake Bay FishesCool Facts:
Samara Nehemiah a Ph.D. student at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. She is developing new statistical methods to estimate spatially explicit population estimates of striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay.Maryland Sea Grant Research Fellowship
Fellowship at:
Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental ScienceProject Title:
Proof-of-Concept Tools for Local Governments to Address Water Quality Restoration in Shallow, Sub-Estuary Tidal WatersCool Facts:
Julia Smeltzer is a master's student in the Marine Estuarine Environmental Science program at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. Her project combines land use and water quality data to recommend restoration strategies that help improve water quality in Calvert County.
Fellowship at:
Morgan State UniversityProject Title:
Baltimore BLUE-CORE - BLUEspace COllaborative REsearch for Urban Coastal Access and Climate Resilience in South BaltimoreCool Facts:
Ebram’s dissertation aims to elevate a conversation around designing with nature to engineer ease, particularly for people living along coastal urban cityscapes. When he has free time he loves to travel to beaches, read about world history, write poetry, and sketch.Program Announcements
News and Blogs
Featured Fellow
Leone Yisrael is a cephalopod-loving scuba diver, cook, and loves to try new activities. She conducts genetic analysis and fieldwork at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center through the Coastal Disease Ecology Lab.
Featured Research Project
Developing a habitat model for mysids, an important link in Chesapeake Bay food webs
Mysids are important mesozooplankton prey for many species of fish in Chesapeake Bay and are an important link in transferring energy from lower to upper trophic levels. Mysids also serve as biological vectors for benthic-pelagic coupling due to their diel vertical migration and omnivorous prey-switching behavior, which makes mysids important regulators of food web architecture. Despite their central role in coastal food webs, surprisingly little is known about mysid ecology and dynamics in Chesapeake Bay.
