Mikayla Deigan

Mikayla Deigan is a doctoral student in Geosciences from Modesto, California. Her family’s trips to the ocean sparked her fascination with the sea and the environment that eventually led to her interest in paleoclimatology, the study of Earth’s climate history. Her research focuses on studying past climates using corals as a natural climate archive. As corals grow and form their calcium carbonate skeletons, they capture a record of ocean conditions in their growth bands. Mikayla’s specific research investigates how these biological processes, known as coral vital effects, impact coral geochemistry. Her work refines climate reconstructions, which in turn improves climate models, allowing us to make more accurate projections about future climate changes.