 Both Katie and Teresa have incredible curiosity. I remember Teresa saying to me once about enjoying the puzzle of trying to figure out these complex datasets. That's fun about working with them is their their curiosity. Coming into this lab and working with a lake was like really exciting and I actually really love it a lot. So it's definitely like broadened what I think I would do in ecology. My research experience in Dr. Kluge's lab has really helped me learn about the importance of integrating science with public outreach so I know in any career that I have in the future I will be involved in projects that not only you know crank out publications in academia but also apply those to public outreach projects or public health projects. There's growing concern about some of the public health implications of harmful algal blooms partially because the the incidents of these blooms are on the rise. So an algal bloom is basically an overgrowth of the algae in the lake. These in particular are blooms of microcystis which are an algae species that produce this toxin microcystin. The microcystin toxin is actually very bad for people so when you either ingest it from swimming the lake and swallowing some water or it gets on your skin you can get like a rash or you can get like a fever. They poorly affect water quality they have toxins that can aerate so if you're say jet skiing they can go into the air and you can breathe them in your dog can drink them it's not good. So this is an ELISA test for microcystin which is an algal toxins you put in some of your water samples and it basically tells you where within 0.5 and 3 is your water sample so it's going to be a color gradient. So if your sample is dark blue it's closer to 0.5 parts per billion and if it's light blue it's closer to 3 parts per billion. The fact that we have algal blooms is not new but there's increasing awareness of the public health consequences of exposure to the toxins produced by these species. It definitely needs to be some better management of the nitrogen phosphorous coming into the lake. This project is really good for me because it studies really physical conditions and allows me to look at patterns and everything like that and then ultimately how that affects things like algal blooms. That's like really cool to see the trends over the years see what our volunteers have noted and how they've seen how the lake has changed over time as well.