09/22/2026
What started as an undergraduate research project is now a published paper! 🎉
Congratulations to College of Science alumna Katie Theissen (B.S. mathematics, applied biology option ’25), whose Hill Research Fellowship project was recently published in Biological Invasions.
Working with professors Jennifer Johnson-Leung and Jim Nagler, Katie used watercraft traffic data to model how invasive quagga and zebra mussels could spread among Idaho waterways. The research could help agencies identify where monitoring and prevention efforts may have the greatest impact.
Katie is now putting her data skills to work as a data quality assistant at Kynetec.
Read the paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10530-026-03915-2
Learn more about Katie’s undergraduate research: https://www.uidaho.edu/newsroom/statistics-data-quagga-zebra-mussel