Breck is a Ph.D. student in Environmental Biology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She researches how rapidly warming waters in the Gulf of Maine affect the diversity, functioning, and structure of marine invertebrate communities on subtidal rock walls. Her research follows up on 40 years of observational studies and hopes to shed light on the ability of this spectacular marine ecosystem to persist despite a changing climate. With this scholarship, she will examine the thermal tolerance of the primary consumers in this system, to determine if increasing ocean temperatures affect their metabolism, and thus the predation pressure they exert on rock wall communities.