Meet the Project Team

A Public-Private Partnership
LO-SPAT brings together research and industry to address the pressing need of sustaining oyster populations through ongoing coastal change. Stay tuned to this page as we bring on additional personnel, students, and partners.
Principal Investigators

Dr. Beth Stauffer

Lead PI

Associate Professor, UL Lafayette Department of Biology.
​Dr. Stauffer is a biological oceanographer and phytoplankton ecologist who has been working on understanding how changing estuarine environments and phytoplankton communities affect coastal food webs and consumers, including oysters. Dr. Stauffer will lead the overall project, direct multistressor experiments to advance our understanding of oyster responses to changing environments, and coordinate deployment of continuous sensors to better monitor oyster reef conditions.

Dr. Louis Plough

CoPI

Started on the LO-SPAT Project as Associate Professor, University of Maryland Horn Point Laboratory. Currently the Director of the USDA Agricultural Research Service Pacific Shellfish Research Unit. Dr. Plough brings a decade of experience in population genetics/genomics of marine animals, oyster larval biology, and oyster aquaculture and restoration. Dr. Plough has been previously funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to run low salinity tolerance experiments and uncover the molecular basis of differential tolerance to low salinity stress. Dr. Plough will be involved in genetically identifying and tracking broodstock with tolerant characteristics, applying genomics and traditional selection methods to choosing broodstock for spawning, and working with the project team and oyster industry partners to ensure successful spawning and tracking population genetic markers over the course of the project.

Dr. Megan La Peyre

CoPI
Research Biologist, U.S. Geological Survey/ LSU AgCenter.
​Dr. La Peyre brings to the project 20 years of experience working on oyster biology, restoration ecology and oyster modeling. Dr. La Peyre serves on many state-level committees and working groups and has served as the lead oyster biologist for Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan Habitat Suitability Index Model Improvement Team. Dr. La Peyre will be continuing her work to map existing and potential low salinity oyster populations, understanding environmental variability associated with these populations, and helping to quantify oyster tolerances to low and varying salinity and other environmental co-stressors both in the lab and the field.

Dr. Natalia Sidorovskaia

CoPI

Professor and Chairperson, Department of Physics, UL Lafayette.
​Natalia Sidorovskaia has over 25 years of research experience in underwater acoustics, including monitoring, processing and interpreting acoustic data to characterize coastal and deep-water Gulf of Mexico ecosystems. She will be focusing on monitoring of oyster reef health using novel acoustic methods. ​

Dr. Stephen Barnes

CoPI

Stephen Barnes is the Executive Director of the Kathleen Blanco Public Policy Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and an Associate Professor of economics in the B.I. Moody III College of Business. Dr. Barnes also serves as the independent economist on the Louisiana Revenue Estimating Conference, a forecasting panel that sets income projections used to create the state budget. He has collaborated with federal and state agencies, industry partners and advocacy groups as well as scholars in more than a dozen disciplines on research addressing many aspects of the economy and population of Louisiana. Prior to his current role at UL Lafayette, Dr. Barnes was on the faculty of the LSU economics department for 10 years and served as Director of the Economics & Policy Research Group. Dr. Barnes holds a BS in economics from LSU and MS and PhD in economics from the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Geoffrey Stewart

CoPI

Moody Company/BORSF Endowed Chair in Regional Business Development and Associate Professor, UL Lafayette Moody College of Business.
​Dr. Stewart's research and teaching efforts focus on issues that impact industry and communities within Louisiana, including the seafood industry.  He also serves as the Director of the Louisiana Entrepreneurship and Economic Development Center. Dr. Stewart will play an important role in the LO-SPAT project by engaging with the oyster industry, including collecting their insight/feedback on project design and keeping them apprised of the progress. 
Partners of LO-SPAT

Sean Robert Griffin

Proteus Technologies LLC
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Sean Griffin holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Louisiana State University and is the owner of Proteus Technologies. He has broad range of experiences and interests pertaining to studying the ocean world and spent a number of years working on ocean and sediment acoustics. He has been working on passive acoustic systems since approximately 2003. Mr. Griffin holds three patents and also authored or co-authored 19 papers published in industry and technical journals.

Spat-Tech, LLC

Oyster Industry Partner
Project Staff & Support Personnel

Carolina Bourque

Carolina Bourque holds a M.S. degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Prior to her current position as Fisheries biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, she was Oyster Program Manager since December 2017. She has extensive experience as a field biologist in the coastal Vermilion Bay/Atchafalaya areas. She has also been active in studying reptiles, physiological ecology, and natural history work prior to LDWF. She is the LDWF assigned manager for LO-SPAT project.

James Hammett

With over 15 years of hands-on experience engineering and maintaining coral reef ecosystems, James Hammett is the Operations Manager of the LO-SPAT project. He builds and maintains the multiple Recirculating Aquatic Systems (RASs) at the UL Ecology Center, operates the watercrafts, and manages the overall operations of the broodstock facility. An educator since 2007, James' areas of expertise are in RAS engineering and maintenance, organizing educational experiences for students of all ages and in life and social sciences. In his spare time, James farms quail, chickens, and produce and is a commercial fisherman. Born and raised in Louisiana waters, he and his wife of 27 years, Amy, raised their four sons on a farm in Kansas before returning home to Louisiana in 2024.

Ann Fairly Pandelides

​Ann Fairly Pandelides is the LO-SPAT Project Manager based at UL Lafayette. She received her M.Sc. in Environmental Toxicology in 2019 from the University of Mississippi and has a B.S. in Marine Biology from the University of Southern Mississippi. Her prior research as R&D Biologist at UM focused on how climate change-related stressors affect the health and survival of oysters at varying life history stages, both in the lab and the field. Ann Fairly is responsible for coordinating communication, managing administrative aspects, and applying her scientific expertise to the project. 

Dr. Lindsey Schwartz

Lindsey Schwartz is a Postdoctoral Researcher at UL Lafayette. She earned a B.S. in Biology from Muhlenberg College, and a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of South Carolina. Lindsey’s dissertation work focused on the impacts of chronic thermal stress on a group of marine mussels using a variety of genomic, biochemical, and physiological approaches. Her work on the project is integral in the genomic selection of broodstock and the analysis of high throughput genomics data.

Dr. Romain Lavaud

Dr. Lavaud is an Assistant Professor of Research at Louisiana State University AgCenter. Combining experimental and theoretical biology, Dr. Lavaud’s research aims at describing and quantifying the impact of environmental factors on the physiology and life history traits of marine organisms. Dr. Lavaud is involved in running ecophysiological experiments to support the genetic selection of tolerant broodstock.

Jennifer Raabe

Jennifer Raabe is a Ph.D. candidate working on the LO-SPAT project and former Stauffer Lab Research Associate at UL Lafayette. She completed her Bachelor's degree in Biology from the University of Southern Mississippi (2009) and her Master's degree in Biology from the University of North Florida (2018). Jen's interests are in the ecology of marine invertebrates and their larvae and how they are affected by environmental changes. She intends to explore these interests in more depth during the LO-SPAT project by conducting multiple stressor experiments on the eastern oyster.

Tessa Rock

Tessa Rock is a M.Sc. student in the Stauffer lab. She completed her B.S in Marine Science at the University of New England in Maine in May 2022. At UNE she conducted research in two labs working on phytoplankton identification and crustacean physiology. For her research she is aiming to study the interaction between oysters and a toxic diatom. In her free time, you can find her playing the piano and belting show tunes, painting, and taking care of her two frogs.   

Maya Lombardi

Maya Lombardi is a Research Laboratory Technician in Beth Stauffer's research lab at UL Lafayette. She got her M.O. in Coastal Ecology from University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography and has a B.S in Marine Science from University of Connecticut - Avery Point. Maya's prior research at URI focused on how the coral-symbiont relationship is affected by climate change. She also has previous experience growing phytoplankton in large amounts for feeding purposes. Maya is aiding in oyster husbandry and algal cultivation.

Alexander Miele

Alexander is a Research Associate in the Stauffer Lab. He was a Tennessee Vol for his BS at the University of Tennessee Knoxville and became a Hokie at Virginia Tech for his MS in Geography. As part of the lab, he leads data collection and management on the LO-SPAT and MBSD Project and is more broadly interested in community water development and security, and ecosystem services and biodiversity maintenance in mountains. He had the privilege of working with Dr. Sibel Bargu at LSU on algal blooms in Lake Pontchartrain before joining the Stauffer Lab, and in his free time likes to enjoy the unique culture of Louisiana. In a past life he was a giant salamander hunting the fast-flowing clear mountain rivers of southern Appalachia or Japan!

Maci Louque

Maci is an undergraduate student worker at the LO-SPAT Broodstock Facility at UL Lafayette, majoring in Marine Biology and has a special interest in working with mollusks. She’s been interested in marine life since childhood and loves organism-focused research. She wants to conduct her own research projects in the future and is eager to get as much experience as she can. In her free time, she loves to read and write on various topics.

​Andre Daugereaux

Andre is Operations Manager at the UL Lafayette Ecology Center.  He is an expert in Louisiana Ecology and has worked on numerous research projects in the fisheries field. Andre executed the broodstock facility construction and maintains building operations.
 Technical Advisory Committee

​Chad W. Hanson

Gulf Coast Officer, Science and Policy Analyst
​The Pew Charitable Trusts

Dr. Jennifer Beseres Pollack

Chair for Coastal Conservation and Restoration, Associate Professor of Marine Biology
​Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M Corpus Christi

Dr. Bill Walton

Acuff Professor of Marine Science and Shellfish Aquaculture Program Coordinator
Virginia Institute of Marine Science, William & Mary

Jason Pitre

Owner, Bayou Rose Oyster Farm
​Lafourche Parish, LA

Dr. Eric Weissberger

Marine Habitat Resource Specialist
​Office of Habitat Conservation, NOAA Fisheries

LO-SPAT Team Alumni

Emma Weiser, B.Sc. - Former Research Laboratory Technician 
Schalk de Waal, Ph.D. - Former Facility Operations Manager
Alexander Douwes, M.Sc. - Former Research Associate
Shelby Perry, M.Sc. - Former Research Associate
Emily Piwowarski, B.Sc. - Former Research Associate
Chloe Boone - Former Undergraduate Student Worker, Broodstock Facility
Durga Poudel, Ph.D. - Former Co-PI & Professor, UL Lafayette School of Geosciences
Lindsey Oxford, M.Sc. - Former Graduate Research Assistant 
Interested in joining the team?
Check out job opportunities below:
There are currently no openings, but check back with us in the future!