Lauren has long had a passion for the frigid waters of the Antarctic. She began diving in July 2008 in the cold waters of Massachusetts out of a love for fishes and has since been pursuing dive training to dive in colder and colder waters. She received her bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke College in 2009 with High Honors in the Biological Sciences, researching the effects of temperature on longhorn sculpin antifreeze protein. She worked for a year at New England Biolab doing protein research. She is currently in the 5th year of her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studying the ecology and physiology of antifreeze proteins in Antarctic fish. Fish blood should freeze at -1.0°C but instead these fish are able to thrive in the -1.9°C water of the Southern Ocean in part because they have biological antifreeze proteins that bind to ice crystals and prevent them from freezing and killing the fish. Lauren is researching the environmental factors that influence antifreeze activity and concentration. Lauren used the Training Grant to purchase her first drysuit and take the Dry Suit Diver and Ice Diver specialty courses. She traveled to Antarctica in 2010, 2012, and 2014 to collect data for her thesis. In 2012 she put her training to good use diving in the -1.9°C water of McMurdo Sound to collect fish (using the same drysuit the training grant helped her purchase!). Ice thickness ranged from six to fifteen feet and dives were frequently between 45 to 80 minutes long. The visibility was endless, a great change from New England or the quarries of central Illinois. She hopes to continue her research in the Antarctic ecosystem after she graduates and is currently job searching for government positions that will allow her to do just that. Lauren is actively diving and is starting her foray into the realm of technical diving, aside from ice diving, in order to learn more about dive physiology and decompression theory.