
Nicole Pittoors
I am a PhD candidate and NSF-GRFP Fellow in Dr. Santiago Herrera's research lab at Lehigh University. My research has brought me to hydrothermal vents in the Eastern Pacific and to mesophotic and deep-sea coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico and the greater Caribbean. I use various genomic methods to study the dispersal, recruitment, and connectivity of benthic invertebrates.
I grew up in metro Detroit and later moved to Michigan's Upper Peninsula to attend Northern Michigan University, where I studied ecology and mathematics. Upon graduation, I was a guest student at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where I fell in love with larval ecology and the deep sea. Conducting science at great depths requires creativity and an understanding of electronics, and I was fortunate to gain robotics skills as a laboratory technician at Harvard University.
I am currently seeking postdoctoral opportunities where I can leverage and expand my genomics skills across diverse biological systems(metabarcoding, RADseq population genomics, and long-read/ single-cell RNA sequencing).

