Julie at the Amazon Rainforest of Manaus, Brazil.Julie graduated with Bachelor of Science in 2013 and a Master of Science in 2017 from Rutgers in Earth & Planetary Sciences. She is also currently doing a PhD part-time at Rutgers in EPS with a focus on paleoentomology, or fossil insects.
Julie’s current research focuses on the evolution of insects during the Triassic Period (~220 million years ago), shortly after the Permian Mass Extinction event, the largest mass extinction event in the history of life. She is studying the diversity of insects from a deposit located on the Virginia/North Carolina border, called the Solite deposit. Julie is also comparing the insect community at the Solite deposit to the diversity at other Triassic age deposits across the globe.
“What's cool is that after the Permian extinction, insects looks pretty "normal" and modern. Almost all of the weird ones died out. So insects have looked very similar to today for the last 200 million years!”
After receiving her MS degree, Julie worked at RUGM as the Program Coordinator, managing all of the museum's the day-to-day activities, working with students and interns, and organizing educational programs for the public. In Jan 2024, Julie started a new position as the Assistant Curator of Natural History at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton where she develops exhibits, curates the natural history collections, works with interns and volunteers on research projects, and assists with educational programming.
A collage of some of the Solite beetles Julie described as part of her PhD work.For both her Masters and PhD at RU, Julie’s main advisors were/are Dr. Marie-Pierre Aubry (EPS) and Dr. David Grimaldi at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC.
“Both have been extremely supportive throughout my entire career, Dr. Aubry since I began working with her on a micropaleontology research project during my junior year of undergrad, and Dr. Grimaldi since he took me on as a Masters student. Lauren has also been an incredible mentor since I began working with her at RUGM in 2017. She is the person who taught me literally everything I know about how to run an entire museum, from managing a staff of 20 student workers + interns, doing the back-end tasks like purchasing and financial management, to developing educational activities for kids and adults of all ages! :)”
Julie loved working with everyone at the Geology Museum at Rutgers: "Every year, I had such a great group of student workers and interns! I loved getting to know everyone and working with each person on different projects. One in particular that stands out is our highschool intern Cole, who I started working with as a seventh grader. He is the one who started our Fossil Friday social media post series, put together two display cases in the museum, and developed a fossil-hunting activity that we ran at the last few Open House events!"