Kharis Schrage
USA
Polar ecology doctoral student
Kharis has been interested in the ocean her whole life. On family trips to the beach, she brought her dissecting scope. From there, marine biology was a center point, and she found every opportunity to explore. During undergrad at William and Mary she did research in Virginia, Maine, Australia, and Antarctica. After graduating, she spent three years working as a technician on different projects, including work on Sturgeon in Georgia and Florida, Salmon on a remote island in Alaska, and three more trips to the Antarctic to work on krill. Nothing has been more valuable than working in the field on long deployments with incredible people. When not in the field she loves fudge, traveling, hiking, going to markets, and making anything from ice cream to a table. She is now a Phd student in the joint program in oceanography between MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) studying Arctic benthic ecology and larval biology.