First Wednesdays: Lecture, Cocktail Hour, and Music

Rebecca Helm is a marine biologist studying life in the open ocean and at the ocean’s surface. Helm grew up in Arizona and completed her undergraduate degree in Marine Science at Eckerd College before conducting research on jellyfish life cycles as a Fullbright Fellow in South Africa. She received a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Brown University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Student Research Fellow. Her Ph.D. work focused on the evolution of open-ocean and coastal Jellyfish species. Helm then conducted research on circadian rhythms as a postdoc at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and later at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, where she continued her research on coastal and open-ocean Jellies. Helm is now an Assistant Professor in the Earth Commons Institute at Georgetown University. Prior to joining Georgetown, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina Asheville, where she has led multiple interdisciplinary projects on the biology of life on the high seas.