Join us for Science on Tap on Thursday, April 4th at 6:30 pm. April's speaker will be UM Flathead Lake Biological Station Assistant Research Professor, Rachel Malison. Her talk will be “Monitoring Montana Waters: A program that supports volunteer water quality monitoring to protect our waters.” Please note: No food will be available downstairs in the Cellar, please come early and eat upstairs prior to the presentation. Rachel Malison grew up in northern Idaho. After completing her MS in Ecology at Idaho State University and her PhD in Systems Ecology at the University of Montana, Rachel lived overseas in Norway for a Marie Curie Fellowship before returning back to Montana. She then completed a postdoc at FLBS on a project funded by the National Science Foundation's Dimensions of Biodiversity program that investigated the biodiversity vulnerability of stonefly (Plecoptera) species in river floodplains. She is currently an Assistant Research Professor at FLBS and in the Ecology & Evolution Program at UM. She also developed and runs FLBS's Monitoring Montana Waters program, which supports water quality monitoring efforts in Montana by providing scientific, technical and financial support to citizen-science watershed groups. She was recently awarded a $6.6M EPA grant to greatly expand our efforts to protect Montana's waters by developing a Pesticide Stewardship Partnership Program for the Columbia River Basin portion of western Montana. In addition to water quality, Rachel’s research interests focus on freshwater systems and span from investigating the genetics and physiology of macroinvertebrates to studying population and community ecology of large river floodplains. Presentations start at 6:30 pm at the Flathead Lake Brewing Company. Brought to you by the Flathead Lakers, Flathead Lake Biological Station, and the Flathead Lake Brewing Co.