Graduate Student Profiles | University of Nevada, Reno

Meet The Grad Students

Elijah Boardman Eli Boardman is a first-year Ph.D. student researching mountain hydrology with Dr. Adrian Harpold in the Graduate Program of Hydrologic Sciences.

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Otis Clyne Otis is a Ph.D. Student in the Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology program advised by Dr. Robert Shriver.

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Elena Cox Elena Cox is a first-year Natural Resources & Environmental Science Ph.D. Student at the University of Nevada, Reno.

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Jordan Zabrecky Jordan is an incoming Ph.D. student in the Natural Resources and Environmental Science Department.

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Elijah Boardman, Hydrology doctoral student

Eli Boardman is a first-year Ph.D. student researching mountain hydrology with Dr. Adrian Harpold in the Graduate Program of Hydrologic Sciences. As an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, he completed an honors thesis on Yosemite hydrology and graduated in June of 2021 with a B.A. in Physics and Environmental Earth Sciences. At the University of Nevada, Reno, Eli studies water at the intersection of physical processes and management paradigms. His current projects include analyzing the propagation of uncertainty in Sierra water supply forecasts, modeling the hydrological effects of forest management scenarios around Tahoe, studying the interaction of fire with ecohydrology in Yosemite, and researching the resiliency of hydrological storage cycles in the Wind River mountains of Wyoming. He thanks his collaborators, advisors, and parents for their support!

Otis Clyne, Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology doctoral student

Otis is a Ph.D. Student in the Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology program advised by Dr. Robert Shriver. Before joining the program, Otis received his BS in ecology and conservation biology from Arizona State University in December of 2018, where he volunteered in several labs working on bird coloration and plant ecophysiology. He spent the following 3 years working as a biological technician for Boise State University, Northern Arizona University, and the Smithsonian National Zoo. He is broadly interested in how management and disturbance affect plant population dynamics and ecological forecasting. His current work involves forecasting big sagebrush demography and recovery after fire to inform land managers of where is likely to recover and how best to allocate restoration resources.

Elena Cox, Natural Resources & Environmental Science doctoral student

Elena Cox is a first-year Natural Resources & Environmental Science Ph.D. Student at the University of Nevada, Reno. She earned her B.A. in Biology from Pitzer College in 2020. She researches fire ecology, soil microbiology, invasion biology, and how these interactions are impacted by climate change. She spent the last several years working for the Forest Service on wildland fire crews across the country. For her undergraduate thesis at Pitzer, which was published in the Public Library of Science, she studied how wildfire impacts soil bacterial assemblages in native and non-native habitat types in Southern California. As a Ph.D. student at the University of Nevada, Reno, she is studying how fire affects soil microbial activity and biogeochemical cycling and how these vary with burn severity, vegetative cover, and time since fire. She will use these results to improve the modeling of fire effects on below-ground processes. This research will help inform management decisions to mitigate fire impact in wildfire-prone ecosystems.

Jordan Zabrecky, Natural Resources and Environmental Science doctoral student

Jordan is an incoming Ph.D. student in the Natural Resources and Environmental Science Department. She received a B.S. in the Geological Sciences from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2020. During her undergraduate education, she realized her interests in streams, water quality, and environmental geochemistry while researching patterns of anthropogenic Gadolinium in local streams. After graduation, she completed an internship with the Pacific Northwest National Lab studying subsurface Plutonium migration from radioactive waste sites and its potential groundwater impacts. She also explored her interests in environmental education while working with the Hitchcock Center in Amherst, MA. For her Ph.D., Jordan is excited to tackle water quality issues from a biogeochemistry perspective by investigating biogeochemical controls on benthic cyanobacteria and anatoxin production in rivers of Northern California.