Natasha Vokhshoori

Name:  Natasha Vokhshoori

Department: Environmental Studies Ocean Sciences 

What Award/ Scholarship did you receive? Hammett Fellowship

What year do you expect to graduate? Summer 2021

Where do you call home?  I grew up in Santa Monica, California.

With all of the choices for college, what made UC Santa Cruz stand out?  I was first captivated by the location; Monterey Bay is stunningly gorgeous. But what solidified UCSC as my choice was the welcoming and friendly nature of everyone.

What is your field of focus?  I am an Ecosystem Geochemist and Paleoceanographer. I use chemical tracers called isotopes to research the ecosystem structure and climate of in accessible environments such as over the past 10,000 years and the deep sea. The research that the Hammett Fellowship generously supported is investigating how climate change in the marine environment may have affected the Chumash people culture and society on the Southern California Channel Islands over the last 2,000 years. The project is in collaboration with marine biogeochemist Dr. Matt McCarthy (my advisor), paleontologist Dr. Paul Koch in Earth Sciences and archaeologist Dr. Torben Rick from the Smithsonian.

What do you hope to do once you graduate from UC Santa Cruz?  I hope work as a Post-Doc at the Smithsonian with the ultimate goal of being a tenure-track research Professor.

What is one memorable moment that stands out for you as a student here?  There are too many! One of the most special things about this campus is the bike path. Biking up is like a wildlife safari tour. I have seen red-tailed hawks, red-shouldered hawks, golden eagles, coyotes, wild turkeys, deer, snakes, falcons, and much more!

What is your one piece of advice for incoming students about life at UC Santa Cruz?  Explore! Hike the trails of upper campus, watch the sunset under the oak trees in the Great Meadows, bike up to campus, watch the whales migrating along the cliffs at the Coastal Sciences campus.

How will this scholarship impact your academic life /research? This Fellowship has allowed me to access both the Channel Islands for fieldwork and museum archives for historical samples. I have been able to accumulate a strong pilot dataset to use for applying an NSF. Most importantly, however, this fellowship has enabled the advancement of my intellectual curiosity to study how people in the past responded to changes in the climate.