Chris Carnivale started in the Ph.D. program in Fall 2017. His main research interests involve the effects of microplastics on microbial food webs. He is also looking at the effect of increased temperature on ingestion by mixotrophs isolated from Arctic environments. Chris was able to collect samples to examine microplastic distribution off of the western Antarctic Peninsula in December 2019. He will return to Antarctica on an oceanographic expedition in 2022.