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Roger joined GMRI as a Postdoctoral Researcher in February of 2022. He is broadly interested in marine ecology but typically studies how animal movement and spatial population structure interact to influence the population dynamics of managed or threatened species. At GMRI, he works with Lisa Kerr in the Quantitative Fisheries Research Lab to study the efficacy of candidate spatial management scenarios for Atlantic cod.

Before coming to GMRI Roger attended Bowdoin College (BA, 2011) where he studied the effects of climate change on sea urchin growth. In graduate school, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Ph.D., 2018) he combined fieldwork with quantitative analysis to investigate long-distance navigation in sea turtles and the population-level implications of using the earth’s magnetic field to identify nesting beaches. After graduating, Roger remained at UNC to teach in the biology department, before joining NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Beaufort, North Carolina. While at NOAA he used simulation modeling to study larval dispersal and population connectivity of several grouper species. Initial analyses characterized broad dispersal patterns with a focus on connectivity between populations in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, while follow-up work investigated the efficacy of marine protected areas designed to facilitate recruitment by protecting spawning grounds.