The Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience
Please welcome Tessa Gebert to the Whitney Laboratory!
Tessa joins the Martindale lab to pursue a Ph.D. in Zoology, studying the biomineralization processes in cnidarians. She earned a B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and a B.A. in Political Science from Mercer University in Macon, GA, before spending her first year of graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she studied the mechanisms underlying coral-algal symbiosis.
As an undergraduate, she studied the enzymatic activity of O-GlcNAc hydrolase and spent a summer at the NY Department of Health as an REU student where she created an atomic model of the small subunit of the Leishmania tarentolae mitoribosome from a cryo-electron microscopy image. By her senior year of college, she transitioned to working mainly on analytical chemistry projects, where she helped develop a method for quantifying thymol in industrial cleaning products using High-performance Liquid Chromatography. This diverse research background led to her interest in the integration of biochemistry, ecology, conservation, and biology at large.
Before transferring to the Whitney Lab, Tessa worked as a 7th-grade civics teacher at a public school in Orlando, FL, and an SAT instructor with PrepExpert. Through these experiences, Tessa has developed a passion for education as prominent as her love for science. When she isn’t working, she loves to spend her time learning Spanish, training her dog, or training for a marathon.