Michaela Wong, a class of 2022 EPP/MSI undergraduate scholar and rising senior at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, spent her 2023 summer interning at the National Center for Coastal Ocean Science Beaufort Lab in North Carolina with the Coastal Resilience, Restoration, and Assessment Branch. Her project contributed to the on-going evaluation of Mission: Iconic Reefs offsite link (M:IR), a collaborative project to restore nearly three million square feet of coral reefs in the Florida Keys. Because M:IR is a large undertaking, obtaining baseline structural complexity measurements (Michaela’s project focus) is critical to accurately evaluating its success throughout the process.
Michaela Wong, an EPP/MSI scholar, in front of the NOAA Beaufort Lab where she completed her 2023 EPP/MSI summer internship. (Image credit: Hailey Poole)