Brandon Russell
PISCO Mooring Technician

Brandon completed his Bachelor of Science degree in 2007 from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada with a specificity in fisheries biology and algal ecology.  He spent the next seven years at the University of British Columbia’s Open Water Research Station as part of a research program studying energetics and nutrition associated with foraging and diving physiology of Steller sea lions, Northern fur seals, and Pacific white-sided dolphins.  He joined the Alaska SeaLife Center in 2015, beginning with the Pacific walrus monitoring project and migrating to the Arctic Seals (PHOCAS) project as the SeaLife Center's project manager, examining energetics and body condition of ice-dependent seals to help better-understand physiological constraints of these habitat-threatened arctic species.  He joined PISCO as the Offshore Mooring Technician in 2019 and is in charge of maintaining an array of moorings off of Strawberry Hill, Oregon. These moorings are part of a long-term monitoring program, ongoing since 1999, that seeks to increase our understanding of oceanographic processes in the inner shelf region and its linkages to larger-scale oceanographic processes. These moorings span a depth range of 15-70 m and collect data on a variety of parameters including current profiles, dissolved oxygen (DO), temperature, conductivity, fluorescence, pH, pCO2, and others. 

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Brittany Poirson
pisco research technician

I am PISCO’s onshore research technician. I deploy, monitor and process the data from our intertidal projects.
Geographically, projects are spread along 12 sites located as far north as Fogarty Creek, OR to as far south as Rocky Point, OR. Our research at these sites aims to assess the changes in intertidal processes over temporal and spatial scales. Our projects are diverse, and range from monitoring pulses of recruitment in mussels and barnacles throughout the year, to assessing the rate of sea star predation on mussels in the lower intertidal. Recently we have started working to quantify the extent of Sea Star Wasting Disease throughout Oregon. 

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Jonathan Robinson
ltreb technician

I am the LTREB (Long Term Research in Environmental Biology) technician.  I oversee projects and experiments looking at long term ecological research in the rocky intertidal along the Oregon Coast.  
The LTREB field experiments, located at six field sites spread across three capes in Central and Southern Oregon, investigate how rocky intertidal community dynamics and structure change through time with changing climate.  Specifically, how bottom up (ie. nutrients and recruitment) and top down (ie predation) drivers effect species interactions and community composition.
If you have questions about this research or research our lab is conducting please email me: robinsjo@science.oregonstate.edu 

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Laurel Field
NSF SSWS technician

I am the STARS (Sea Star Tragedy and Recovery Study) grant technician. The collaborative research funded by the STARS grant aims to understand mechanisms of resistance and resilience to system-wide loss of Pisaster ochraceus in the rocky intertidal community from Oregon to Southern California. To quantify the direct and indirect ecological consequences of the SSWS epidemic, fourteen field experiments at fifteen core study sites test the effects of compensatory predation, mussel recruitment, mussel growth, recruitment facilitation, and resilience of predator populations to disturbance. Experiments are monitored monthly by researchers at Oregon State University, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Santa Barbara. An additional 19 ancillary field sites, interspersed between core study sites, are monitored yearly. The research will culminate in the development of a spatially-explicit metacommunity model to understand how the mechanisms quantified by field experiments give rise to documented spatial patterns in community structure since wasting. I coordinate and lead monthly sampling trips to Northern California field sites, joined by UC Santa Cruz collaborators in the summer months and spend the rest of my time working our Oregon field sites with the rest of our team.

I am available to answer questions about our lab's SSWS research in both Oregon and Northern California as well as questions about our CADFW permits. My email is: fieldla@oregonstate.edu

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Kinsey MAtthews 
kinsey.matthews@gmail.com (she/her)

​I am a second year seasonal PISCO research assistant. I assist with long-term STARS and LTREB projects in Oregon and California along with long-term offshore monitoring projects. In lab, I help with the data processing of long-term recruitment experiments. I received my B.S. in Biology from Oregon State University. Post-graduation, I was an intern at the Bimini Biological Field Station and at the Large Marine Vertebrates of the Philippines, working on projects ranging from lemon shark personality to the spatial ecology and habitat use of whale sharks. I will be attending Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in the Fall under the supervision of Dr. Rick Starr and Dr. Scott Hamilton. I will be studying spatial ecology, sustainable fisheries, and MPA effectiveness. 

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Amanda Chiachi
amandachiachi@gmail.com (SHE/HER)

​I am a second year seasonal PISCO research assistant.  I assist with long-term field monitoring of both STARS and LTREB intertidal field experiments. I also help manage in lab data processing of all marine invertebrate recruitment, growth and predation rate experiments. I graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with degrees in Marine Science and Wildlife Conservation. My passion for research has taken me on many adventures from living on a three-masted schooner, to the Smithsonian Tropical Research institute in Panama! I will be attending Cal State University, Northridge in the Fall to obtain a M.Sc. in intertidal community ecology.

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John Dickens
dickenjo@oregonstate.edu (he/his)

   I am a first year seasonal PISCO research assistant. In the field I support the long-term and onshore and offshore monitoring of STARS and LTREB experiments. In the lab I assist with data processing of mussel growth, predation rate, and invertebrate recruitment experiments as well as doing bad impressions of Homer Simpson.
   I earned a B.A. in English from University of North Florida and a graduate certificate in Fisheries and Wildlife from Oregon State University. I have research experience with salamander ecology, sage-grouse thermal ecology, and estuarine invertebrate dynamics. My goals include earning a Ph.D. in ecology in order to work professionally as a conservation biologist at the interface of humanity and natural resources.