Graduated Undergraduate Researchers

Hailey Gosnell
Hailey is a senior Biology/Psychology double major. She is currently working on learning about techniques related to crustacean eye histology. Her future goals are to attend graduate school and work in an academic setting as a professor and researcher. She likes to spend time taking care of her pet rats, snails, and goldfish.
Adara Grant
Adara is a senior Biology major with a minor in Spanish. They have worked in the lab with optomotor behavioral experiments to determine visual acuity and polarization sensitivity of mud crabs and porcelain crabs and are currently helping PhD candidate Maddy Janakis develop and run experiments that test the visual and learning abilities of crabs through their abilities to solve mazes. After graduating, they plan on going to graduate school for aquaculture and fisheries science. In their free time, they enjoy thrifting, learning more about fish and being outdoors, and taking their cat for walks.
Selina Guirges
Selina Guirges is a senior Biology major with minors in Neuroscience and Medical Humanities and Ethics. She is currently working on finding out if green porcelain crabs can see polarized light. She plans on going to graduate school for forensic science. In her free time, she enjoys watching true crime and spending time with her animals. Her biggest accomplishment is being in the top 0.01% of One Direction listeners in 2021.  
Olivia Harris
Olivia graduated from the USC Honors College in 2018 with a major in Biology and a minor in Psychology. Her first undergraduate research project in the Speiser Lab involved studying structural color and anti-glare mechanisms in scallop eyes. Her second project involved designing and building an optomotor rig for experiments on visual acuity in crustaceans. Olivia enjoys large microscopes in dark rooms, looking at things in tanks, and ordering tea at coffee shops. She is now a PhD student in Nate Morehouse's lab at the University of Cincinnati
Taylor Hollingsworth
Taylor graduated from USC in 2018 with a major in Biology and a minor in Chemistry. As an undergraduate researcher, she compared the nervous systems of scallops (which have eyes and can swim) to the nervous systems of their close relatives (most of which lack eyes and do not swim). Taylor enjoys hiking, evolutionary biology, and The Office. As preparation for medical school, She is currently training to be an EMT and shadowing medical researchers in Philadelphia.
Tyler Horan
Tyler graduated from the UofSC Honors College after studying biology and neuroscience and making significant contributions to multiple projects in the Speiser Lab.  These projects included ones asking questions about the distributed visual system of scallops through behavioral experiments and others focused on associative learning  in brittle stars. Tyler plans to attend graduate school and continue research within the field of neuroscience.
Loann Koch
Loann is a 3rd year Marine Science undergraduate at UofSC with a particular interest in physical oceanography. His efforts in the lab involve computational modeling and data visualization. Loann loves to partake in the hardcore outdoor trips, and he meets on the soccer pitch weekly. He wants to dedicate his work to learning and using new technologies to study ocean and atmospheric processes.
Lauren Kunselman
Lauren graduated from UofSC with a major in Marine Science and a minor in Neuroscience.  As an undergraduate, she studied the visual neurobiology of the Florida fighting conch, Strombus alatus.  She characterized the cerebral ganglia of S. alatus with ethyl gallate staining and used immunolabelling to identify G-protein expression in the retina.  She also performed optomotor experiments on S. alatus to assess their visual capabilities.  Currently, Lauren is a PhD student at the University of Florida, where she works in Elaine Seaver's lab at the Whitney Laboratory studying the evolution and mechanisms of regeneration in the marine polychaete Capitella teleta.
Rebecca LeBlanc
Rebecca is a junior Marine Science major concentrating in Biological Oceanography. Her current project concerns the spatial problem-solving of porcelain crabs in complex benthic environments. She plans to attend graduate school and pursue a career in scientific research. Rebecca likes to spend her time trying to keep her houseplants alive, running on the Riverwalk, and baking new recipes.
Rebecca Lucia
Rebecca is a junior at USC studying biology and marine science. Her current work in the lab deals with visual systems in snapping shrimp. She is currently using behavioral experiments to study their visual acuity will later investigate their spectral sensitivity. She is planning to attend graduate school and continue research in the marine science field.
Jenna Mazza
Jenna is a senior Chemistry major with a concentration in aquatic chemistry and an interest in working with marine life. She currently works with Nick in researching dynamic color change in grass shrimp and Saron shrimp, and hopes to come up with a solo project before she graduates. Jenna also has minors in Art History and Studio Art, as she is also interested in working to conserve and restore art. She dreams of  one day being a light house keeper.
Keyonne McKnight
Keyonne McKnight is a senior Biological Sciences major and a Japanese minor. She is researching behavioral associations between mud crabs (Panopeus herbstii) and snapping shrimp (Alpheus heterochaelis) to see if they have a mutualistic relationship based around burrow construction and defense. She plans on becoming a veterinarian or working in animal science/veterinarian medicine research. In her free time, she enjoys hanging out with her dog and her friends, and volunteering at the animal shelter to interact with other animals.
Hayley Miller
Hayley graduated from the USC Honors College in 2017 with a B.S. in Biological Sciences and a minor in Chemistry. Her work in the Speiser Lab provided the first experimental evidence that the unique mirror-based eyes of scallops have a pupillary response. She also worked to characterize the muscles in the eyes of scallops that might control pupil constriction and dilation. She is currently attending the University of South Carolina School of Medicine at Greenville where she will graduate in the Class of 2021.
Isabelle Paris
Isabelle is a senior Environmental Studies major at USC graduating in December '23.  In the lab, she helps PhD candidate Maddy Janakis with optomotor behavioral trials and watches mud crabs run in circles under different colored lights. Post-graduation, she will be attending graduate school for marine biology in hopes of working in marine mammal rehabilitation. On campus, she spends most of her time participating in research and going on trips with the Gamecock Surf Club or Mountaineering and Whitewater Club. Outside of school, she loves reading, photography, bumming around the beach, and cuddling with her two kittens.
Courtney Rulison
Courtney is a senior at USC majoring in Biology with a minor in Chemistry. Her research project concerns the behavioral and visual ecology of scallops. In particular, she is studying how scallops respond to novel objects by detecting them visually, and then extending their sensory tentacles to touch and taste them. During Summer '18, Courtney spent two weeks with the Dogs of Chernobyl project, assisting with biological research in the exclusion zone. She hopes to become a veterinarian.
Alex Siegfried
Alex is a junior in the USC honors college.  He’s majoring in chemical engineering with a minor in Biology.  His current research project focuses on extracting and identifying different pigments expressed in the shell plates of chitons.  His next project will concern how chitons are able to biomineralize their radulas with magnetite.  He’s done research in the Speiser lab during the 2017 and 2018 summers and hopes to continue that trend.  He plans on going to medical school.
Caitlin Wolfe
Caitlin Wolfe was the first undergraduate researcher in the Speiser Lab. She graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2015.. Her independent research project focused on photonic structures in invertebrates, primarily those responsible for the  bright blue eyes of  the bay scallop  Argopecten irradians. Caitlin currently works at a pharmacy in Columbia and she is applying to graduate programs to become a Physician Assistant. Caitlin also works as a stand-in/body double in the film industry. She most recently worked on Robert Kirkman's new series, Outcast, that was filmed in South Carolina. In her free time, Caitlin enjoys hiking, traveling, and photography.