CICOES Fellowship Postdoc Scholar

By Haley Staudmyer

In January of 2022, CICOES welcomed a new postdoctoral researcher, Hannah Joy-Warren. Hannah is a biogeochemical oceanographer working with Dr. Alison Gray (UW Oceanography) and Dr. Andrea Fassbender (NOAA PMEL). In her current work, she hopes to understand the details of the biological component of the transfer of carbon from the atmosphere to the ocean in the Southern Ocean.

CICOES is the latest chapter in a life full of adventure. Hannah grew up in both Washington, D.C. and Vancouver, B.C. Her summers were spent with family on Lake Huron in Ontario. Over the years, she watched as the invasive zebra mussel wrought havoc on the Great Lakes and was inspired to better understand these changes. “I remember bringing friends and my sister along for my science fair projects where I would go out in a boat and sample the water, and they just did not see the fun in it the way that I did. I was like, oh, this is not something that is exciting to everybody, this is a ‘me’ thing.” Nonetheless, her family, comprised of many scientists and a plethora of pets including snakes, gerbils, rats, fish, and dogs, always encouraged her to pursue a career studying the natural world.

Hannah completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago, where she found plenty of opportunities to explore beyond the Windy City. She studied abroad in both Cape Town, South Africa and Beijing, China. She completed two summer research internships in Minneapolis, MN and Woods Hole, MA. One of her courses even afforded her the opportunity to complete a small research project in the Bahamas. While her classmates were collecting snails and snorkeling for their projects, she recalled hers being a bit different: “I studied the effluent from the field station we were staying at and everyone else was looking at me like, ‘Hey, you realize you’re just standing in poop water all day and measuring it, right?  And I was like, ‘Yeah, this is great, guys!’”

Hannah came away from her undergraduate studies knowing that she was on the right path. “I realized that I could do a job where I get to be outside, surrounded by incredible people who love playing in the natural world and answering questions. I realized that graduate school would be a really fun thing to do with great people that I like to spend time with.” In pursuit of this goal, she packed up her life again and moved to California to study polar biological oceanography and biogeochemistry at Stanford University. Though her traveling slowed down a bit during her graduate studies, she did join four separate research cruises to both the Arctic and the Southern Ocean before moving back home to Vancouver, B.C. in 2020 for the last few months of her Ph.D. – just enough time for the cabin fever to set back in.

“I spent seven years in California, and that was too long to be in one place,” said Hannah. She hopped on a plane once more and landed in Sweden, where she spent one year as a Fullbright Scholar studying physical oceanography at the University of Gothenburg. This time, though, she wasn’t moving across the world by herself. She was joined by her dog, Luna, and the two of them quickly felt at home in Sweden. Said Hannah, “I did a bunch of bike trips. I went “bikepacking” with Luna and she would run and run and run for miles and then ride in the backpack when she got tired. There’s lakes all over Sweden, so we’d bike from lake to lake and go swimming and camp along the way.”

Hannah has landed at CICOES for now, where she is thrilled to be surrounded by the water and mountains she loves. Her advice for moving around and leading the life of an adventuring scientist? “I think trusting yourself is one of the biggest things. Every time I’ve decided to move I have been very confident in that decision and excited about it. And then, every time I’ve shown up to the new place, I’ve thought, ‘What have I done and why have I done this to myself?’ So I’ve learned how to trust my past self and remember that the first few weeks or months are really hard but I just tell myself, let’s jump in with both feet and find the fun things and go explore.”