Lizzie Wallace

Lizzie Wallace has two high school teachers for parents and spent her childhood summers camping with her family along the rocky coastlines of Newfoundland. It was there, listening to the songs and stories of fisherman, that she discovered her love of the ocean. It wasn’t until her undergraduate years as a civil engineering student at the University of Virginia that she read an article in Oceanus magazine about Jon Woodruff, a hurricane hunter at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. It swept her off onto her next journey in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program. She now works with Jeff Donnelly, Woodruff’s former Ph.D. advisor, hunting past hurricanes of her own by analyzing sediment cores from throughout the Caribbean. When she’s not pursuing her scientific goals, she enjoys reading fantasy novels, trips to the rock gym, borrowing her friend’s cats, and singing sea shanties at all hours of the day and night. Her mentor for this article was Doug Fraser, environmental reporter at The Cape Cod Times.