I'm proud of our new modeling paper (now out as "accepted" at @ESAEcology) and the compelling story it tells about how foundation species (kelp) mediate benthic competition using @LterSbc data. But I'm more proud of the scientist who wrote it.
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(Paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ecy.3304)

Raine Detmer, now an @NSFGRFP fellow in our group @eembucsb, started her scientific career as a transfer student (h/t @OfficialVCCCD!) who loved math and biology, and decided to enroll in our Ecological Modeling course *despite* being warned "transfer students rarely succeed."

Raine was a quick study--and eager to learn more. She asked me about research that fit her interests: coastal marine ecosystems, species interactions, climate change. Together with @AdrianStier, @biologizer, & Dan Reed, we designed an #NSFREU project that fit the bill.

The results you'll find in this paper--an elegant model shaped by Dan & Bob's deep intuition for the system, Adrian's knack for seeing the bigger picture, Tom's knowledge of kelp seasonality, and Raine's *gift* for mathematical synthesis--emerged from that 10-week project.

Of course, it took a little longer to write them up, craft an intuitive explanation of the model, and make appropriate comparisons to @LterSbc data! (This is one of my favourites, showing LTER timeseries (top) and model output (bottom).)

In the end, the manuscript Raine crafted was comprehensive and elegant. In fact, it was so well-written that, for the first (and probably only) time in my career, we received an editorial decision of immediate acceptance.

I know Raine will go on to write many papers. And the path to publication will probably not be this easy again. But today, I'm just so happy that someone who was told "you can't" got the opportunity to hear such a resounding "yes, you can!"