Christian Johnson
Christian Johnson is a second-year marine biology Ph.D. student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO). He began developing GASP with Dr. Maria Vernet and Dr. Andy Allen in the spring of 2023. While it was initially proposed as a research project for his Ph.D., GASP has grown substantially since its conception. At SIO, he conducts research at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) and serves as a visiting scientist on Viking expedition ships during the austral summer. His current interests involve understanding how nutrient inputs from penguin colonies around the Western Antarctic Peninsula affect phytoplankton communities, using GASP to explore these interactions. His introduction to polar research began through a research fellowship with Dr. Allison Cusick and the FjordPhyto project, where he first began investigating polar ecosystems.