Alyssa Tsukada is a PhD student at the University of Rhode Island, studying Biological Oceanography. Her research focuses on phytoplankton ecology with an emphasis on diatoms’ role in global carbon sequestration and its relationship to climate changes, currently funded through the Narragansett Bay Long-Term Plankton Time Series.
Alyssa first became interested in environmental science and oceanography at a relatively young age, growing up in a small Alaskan town, drawing inspiration from her surroundings and the stories shared by her family.
For her outreach project, Alyssa created a coffee table style book titled “The Little Things: Exploring Nature’s Mirrored Microscopic Morphologies”. This amazing series of side by side images pairs microscopic subjects with their macroscopic mirrors, a way of curating a view of the natural world from the scale of nanometers to light-years.
In Alyssa’s words, “I have been so incredibly fortunate in my career to explore our natural world through lenses few people aregranted access to, and I am always searching for accessible and creative ways to spark that same sense of awe and curiosity in others. I do not expect this collection to completely shift your world view or inspire a new career path. However, I do hope that at the very least, it can bring a little bit of joy and wonder to your everyday surroundings. And maybe even make you want to stop and stare at a random rock, bug, or drop of sea water just a little bit closer…”. Take a look at some select images from Alyssa’s book below.
