Congratulations to Chris Moore on successfully defending his PhD dissertation and graduating from ECU!

I am so proud to have graduated my first PhD student, Dr. Chris Moore! 
Below is a collage of images from the past 6 years of Chris working in the Blakeslee lab:

Here is the introduction I gave about Chris before he delivered an excellent defense talk!

​My first experience with Chris was when I put out an ad for graduate students on a listserv back in 2015 shortly after I started at ECU, and he wrote to me with an enthusiastic email that immediately made him stand out among others that contact me. Chris had really looked into my research and spoke of how he might be able to move my research program forward. And that is truly what he did. Chris was one of my first students, along with Becca Barnard who is on Webex with us, and they both really got my lab going. The year that Chris was accepted, he started early and assisted on a side project, which ultimately led to a publication where he was a co-author. Chris has assisted on so many projects not only with my lab, but with others. He is incredibly generous with his time and is always enthusiastic about everything he does. He also works incredibly hard, and has pulled together some really fascinating research as he will talk about very soon. As a result of his research efforts, he is first or co-author on 5 publications already, with 3 additional publications in review and 1 in prep. One first-authored paper currently in review is in the journal Ecology, and it is past the desk rejection stage, which is very exciting! He has also applied for and received an incredible number of grants during his time at ECU. These include: Golden Key International Academic Honor Society, Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology, Sigma Xi, Garden Club of America, American Malacological Society, N.C. Coastal Conservation Association, N.C. Sea Grant / National Estuarine Research Reserve, N.C. Wildlife Federation, and the Lerner-Gray Fund for Marine Research. Altogether, this has totaled over 26,000, which is an incredible achievement for acquiring research funding to fund his work as a graduate student. Chris has also received multiple awards for talks, posters, and other competitions, including RCAW, Sigma Xi, SEERS conference, American Fisheries Society, CERF, AFS Tidewater. At ECU, he has had many leadership roles including in BGSA and AFS and has volunteered his time at many ECU events. He has also had an important teaching role in the department, at first TA’ing the Ecology lab and most recently as an instructor of BIOL 1050. Chris consistently receives high praise from students for his teaching and mentorship. Speaking of mentorship, he has mentored 9 undergraduate students in the department, including helping to mentor an honors thesis research project completed by Corey Winkler. He has also been incredibly generous of his time in terms of experimental design and statistical analysis for many students in my lab and in other labs. All these accomplishments demonstrate the high quality work that Chris has done over the years and what a truly good person he is. It’s hard to imagine my lab without him in it, but I know we will continue to collaborate into the future and stay friends.

And finally a bunch of pictures of the defense, his celebration party, and graduation!