{"id":30410,"date":"2026-11-11T10:33:58","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T15:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/?post_type=story&p=30410"},"modified":"2026-11-11T10:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T15:40:12","slug":"jackie-wallis-26-m-s-27-has-her-research-and-clark-life-down-to-a-science","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/2026\/11\/11\/jackie-wallis-26-m-s-27-has-her-research-and-clark-life-down-to-a-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Jackie Wallis \u201926, M.S. \u201927, has her research and Clark life down to a science"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

\u2018There’s a million different ways to go about pursuing your interests\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jackie Wallis \u201926, M.S. \u201927, visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium as a kid growing up in Northern California, gazing in awe at the extensive jellyfish exhibit and peeking at the garden eels<\/a>. She dreamed of becoming a marine biologist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next year, after Wallis earns her master\u2019s degree in biology<\/a> through the 4+1 Accelerated Master\u2019s Degree<\/a> program, she could find herself doing the work of those childhood dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jackie Wallis ’26, M.S. ’27, receives the environmental science research excellence award during the School of Climate, Environment, and Society graduation celebration in 2025, posed with Biology Professor Kate Mathis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo have a full roundabout moment, I could work at this aquarium that I grew up loving, but from a microbiology entry point it is so cool,\u201d Wallis says during an interview by the Ahlgren lab in the Lasry Center, where she has spent countless hours conducting research throughout her Clark career. \u201cI think it just goes to show that when you go to college, you realize there’s a million different ways to go about pursuing your interests.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wallis met her advisor, Biology<\/a> Professor Nathan Ahlgren<\/a>, just a month or so into her first year at Clark, while she was an environmental science<\/a> major on the environmental and conservation biology track. The two attended a seminar at the George Perkins Marsh Institute<\/a>, and connected. A few months later, Wallis joined the professor\u2019s lab, which researches the ecology and evolution of marine cyanobacteria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLast year, every second that I wasn’t in class, I would be in the lab working through all of the 100-plus samples that I had collected alongside the Worcester Cyanobacteria Monitoring Collaborative<\/a>. I extracted DNA with the end goal of sending it off to get processed and sequenced,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, Wallis\u2019 work in the lab looks much different. She is a teaching assistant for Ahlgren\u2019s Physiological Ecology of Marine Algae course and spends a lot of time prepping the space for students conducting experiments on a strain of cyanobacteria. \u201cThese bacteria are responsible for about 50% of the oxygen on Earth. They’re extremely important for humanity’s survival, and only if there’s an overabundance do you get the toxic blooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLearning how to teach and help plan curriculum is a new set of skills that I haven’t had to use before now,\u201d she acknowledges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018It has taught me tenacity\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The lab collaborates with the Worcester Cyanobacteria Monitoring Collaborative, a group of volunteer community scientists who collect water samples from about 20 ponds to monitor for cyanobacteria. The Ahlgren lab does further testing of the samples, extracting DNA for sequencing to better understand their composition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The summer Wallis was a rising sophomore, she stayed on campus, supported by the Penn Research Award<\/a>, and used the Ahlgren lab\u2019s flow cytometer to examine the samples and report findings back to the city. These samples became the basis of her master\u2019s thesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy project is a snapshot of summer of 2024,\u201d she says. \u201cMy goals are to understand what’s driving the bacterial communities of these ponds, which species are dominant, and how does being in a super urban environment like Worcester affect the composition of these ponds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n