Dr. Erin Grey-Avis says I love being a biologist because I get to learn and teach about the incredible diversity of life and how it works. Her teaching is centered on providing a solid foundation in biology to incoming freshman majors, as well as providing more advanced courses in conservation and genetics. She enjoys involving students in her research projects and helping them become confident, independent scientists. In addition to teaching and research, she puts a lot of effort into translating her research. For example, her findings on the Blue crab larval responses to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, has helped local, state and federal policy-makers better assess the impact of this event. Currently, she is developing statistical tools to predict new biological invasions into the Great Lakes, and communicating these tools widely to regional and international policy-makers so that they can prevent new invasions.

Her research program focuses on in the ecology and evolution of aquatic invertebrates, a group of animals with an amazing diversity of life histories that are also very important to human society. Her projects range from using high-throughput DNA sequencing technology to monitor biodiversity, to identifying larval invertebrate forms, to predicting how aquatic invasive species are transported around the world.