Dexter joined the lab in January 2021 as a Ph.D. student. He is broadly interested in carbon cycling and water quality in drinking water reservoirs and how modeling and ecological forecasting can be used to inform drinking water management.

While Dexter is new to the lab as a graduate student, he has actually been at Virginia Tech and a member of the Carey Lab since Fall 2016. He graduated in May 2020 with a B.S. in Water: Resources, Policy, and Management from the College of Natural Resources and Environment. As an undergrad in the Carey Lab, he worked on several different projects in addition to assisting with routine field work, data management, and analytical chemistry analyses. He conducted an independent senior thesis project exploring the drivers and variability of dissolved organic matter in a drinking water reservoir.

As a graduate student, Dexter’s research will explore how different components of carbon cycling (metabolism rates, and organic matter quantity and quality) are influenced by global change and how we can model and forecast these changes. Dexter is excited to continue working in the Roanoke reservoirs and work with the Western Virginia Water Authority!