Allie is an invertebrate nerd who has spent most of her young career working in the intertidal zone. That is to say, she loves critters that don’t have backbones and enjoys studying the transitional zone between the land and the ocean. Before moving back to Portland, she worked for three years as a Laboratory Technician in a marine lab on the central coast of Chile, focusing on kelp crabs and hypoxia, the effects of bio-fouling, as well as larval recruitment and intertidal ecology. She has also had the pleasure of working as a dive assistant in Hawaii!
Currently she is working on a graduate degree at Portland State University, studying contaminants in marine environments. Most recently her studies focused on the effects of pesticides on clams, and future efforts aim to focus on the effects of micro-plastics in the environment.
Allie began teaching with Saturday Academy in 2020. She is able to travel across the Portland-metro region including Gresham, Forest Grove and Vancouver.