Erika Woolsey
Dr. Erika Woolsey is a marine biologist, National Geographic Explorer, and CEO and co-founder of The Hydrous, a non-profit devoted to translating marine science into public understanding. As a Visiting Scholar at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab, she is Co-PI on an NSF-funded project entitled “Towards Universal Ocean Literacy: Advancing Science Learning through Immersive Virtual Environments.” For this work, Dr. Woolsey and the VHIL team are investigating the effects of virtual reality on ocean literacy, empathy, and self-efficacy, with special focus on gender, race, and income. She studied biology and art history at Duke University and conducted her Masters and Ph.D. research on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia with the University of Sydney and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University. She was recently a 2018-2019 Ocean Design Fellow at the Stanford d.school and the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions.