Stefanie Maxin

2025 Short-Term Workforce Fellow
Master of Science in Marine and Environmental Science,
December 2024

After completing the Master of Marine and Environmental Science program at the University of the Virgin Islands Stefanie Maxin began her 8-week Securing STEM Island Pathways Fellowship under the mentorship of Dr. Kayla Blincow in January 2025. With this fellowship, Stefanie will expand upon her master’s thesis work, which focused on utilizing passive acoustic data to learn more about reef fish that form spawning aggregations. Specifically, she will work on training a fish sound detector in tasks such as identifying reef fish sounds at a species-specific level and testing the detector's efficiency with different recording devices. Additionally, she will continue to identify new species-specific sounds based on the data collected, such as the spawning-associated sounds produced by yellowtail parrotfish.