Haleh Mawson, '21

BS, Biology

About

Haleh Mawson is a senior majoring in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology, with a focus on terrestrial and marine botany. In addition to Arctic studies, she also intends to minor in marine biology, assuming she ever remembers to tell her advisor. She currently volunteers at the Burke Herbarium in plant identification, and has pressed both seaweeds and flowers for the collection. She is active in research, having presented at the Undergraduate Research Symposium in spring of 2020, and helped out with field work in Okanogan, Pacific, and San Juan counties. A Washington native, Haleh spent part of her childhood in the tropics with family, where she developed a lifelong aversion to heat and sunshine. The goal of avoiding temperatures above 21 degrees celsius led her to the Arctic Ocean, which, in addition to being cold, has the added advantages of stunning beauty, unique and giant seaweeds, and a human-ecosystem relationship that is now rare in most of the world. There is no other region where the link between oceanic and human health is so clear, and no other region where it is so critically endangered by climate change, irrational business practices, and international posturing. She hopes to go on to graduate school and dedicate herself to understanding the impacts of sea ice melt on algal communities along the Arctic coasts. She expects to graduate in the spring of 2021.