Laurie Chong was the 2015-2016 AMS Congressional Science Fellow. During her fellowship, Laurie worked for Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA), then ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science. Her portfolio broadly covered energy and environmental issues including: marine debris removal, energy storage legislation, clean energy technologies, the state of geoscience funding, and NOAA and DOE appropriations. Laurie is now working for the Molecular Foundry, a division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as a Marketing and Communications specialist. 

 

Prior to the fellowship, Laurie was the Oceanography instructor aboard the Sailing Yacht Argo for study abroad company, SeaMester, where she used exotic locales across Southeast Asia to teach undergraduate students basic oceanography and also to demonstrate how social and political issues are linked to aquatic and marine environmental problems.

 

Laurie received a B.S. in Chemistry from University of California San Diego and a Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from the University of Southern California. Her dissertation focused on marine carbon and nitrogen cycles, looking at the impact of the Amazon River on the cycling and storage of carbon and nitrogen in the deep Atlantic Ocean and underlying sediments.