Lesley Anderson

Lesley Anderson is in her 4th year of teaching at High Tech High in California as an 11th grade biology and environmental science teacher. She studied biological sciences as an undergraduate at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo where she conducted research on behavioral and morphological studies of tropical freshwater fish species. She is currently pursuing her masters of science in chemistry from South Dakota State University. In 2011 Lesley was part of a research team that tagged and tracked breaching great white sharks off the coast of South Africa. In the summers of 2013-14 Lesley worked as a data analyst for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory helping to create an archival database for Arctic sea ice thickness measurements through computer programming. In the summer of 2015 Lesley worked for NOAA at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in the Marine Mammal and Turtle Division optimizing protocols for RNA extraction from sea turtle blood. Her students are currently partnering with Rising Tide Conservation to turn her classroom into a working aquarium laboratory where students can collaborate with researchers in order to learn how to breed ornamental fish in captivity. Lesley hopes that her research opportunity in Antarctica will help her to co-design a new project with her students when she returns.