Alaska Sea Grant selects graduate students for fellowship

June 20, 2019

Photos courtesy of Alaska Sea Grant. Alaska Sea Grant fellows for 2019-2020 are, from left, Meredith Pochardt, Madison Kosma and Katlyn Haven.

Alaska Sea Grant has selected three individuals for its year-long fellowship program.

Meredith Pochardt will spend her fellowship at the National Marine Fisheries Service, Alaska Region, in Juneau. The agency, a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is also known as NOAA Fisheries. Pochardt recently graduated with a master of fisheries science degree from Oregon State University. She will work in the Office of Habitat Conservation assisting researchers with their habitat conservation and fisheries management needs, including the synthesis of environmental data to develop habitat variables and statistical analyses of habitat data. Pochardt will begin her fellowship in August.

Madison Kosma will work in Anchorage in the Office of Protected Resources, also within NOAA Fisheries' Alaska Region. Starting in September, Kosma will focus on a Cook Inlet beluga whale citizen-scientist project, as well as beluga monitoring research. She will also develop outreach materials for sighting data of North Pacific right whales. Kosma expects to graduate with her master’s degree in fisheries from the University of Alaska Fairbanks this fall.

Katlyn Haven, a recent Oregon State University graduate, will spend her fellowship at the National Park Service in Anchorage. Haven will support several management projects, including lagoon monitoring, ocean acidification monitoring, and the development of digital image libraries for zooplankton and phytoplankton monitoring. Haven received her master’s degree in marine resource management from OSU this spring and will begin her fellowship in July.

“We’re very pleased to welcome this new cohort of promising and talented graduate students to our fellowship program. Since we launched the program five years ago, we have seen most of our fellows go on to land great jobs with state and federal agencies that serve the needs of coastal Alaska,” said Heather Brandon, director of Alaska Sea Grant.

Alaska Sea Grant is a statewide program headquartered within the UAF College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. It is part of the National Sea Grant Program, a division of NOAA.

The Alaska Sea Grant State Fellowship program is modeled after the Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship, which places highly motivated young professionals in federal agencies in Washington, D.C., or in Congress. Both fellowships provide experience and networking opportunities that help recipients transition from academic study to successful careers. More information about Sea Grant fellowships, including the Alaska Sea Grant State Fellowship, is available on the web.