Dr. Laura Rogers-Bennett completed her Ph.D. in Ecology at the University of California, Davis and two post-doctoral fellowships at U.C. Santa Cruz’s Institute of Marine Science and at the U. Washington’s Friday Harbor Labs. Her lab known as the SubMERG lab and is located at the UC Davis, Bodega Marine Lab. Dr. Rogers-Bennett is a Research Associate with the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center at the University of California, Davis and a Senior Environmental Scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in the Marine Region.

She leads a team that investigates marine ecosystem health, invertebrate populations, fishery management and marine conservation. To do this work they conduct use-inspired science using an interdisciplinary approach combining field, laboratory, and quantitative modeling to examine questions related to wildlife health, ecosystem tipping points, marine conservation biology, fisheries sustainability and climate change. She has over 60 scientific publications and 10 book chapters all on marine science. The lab has established a 20-year underwater marine ecosystem monitoring program and has documented the impacts of climate change and the massive marine heat wave of 2014-2016 on kelp forests and abalone resources in California.