Elizabeth Leonardis — a.k.a. “zibba” — is a registered nurse, who most recently worked at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, NY. She has since taken a sabbatical from nursing and is embarking on a journey to Antarctica with her boyfriend Alex, where she will be working as a research assistant at the Palmer Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site. Elizabeth and Alex met as undergraduates at UC Santa Barbara, where she earned a degree in BioPsychology. Elizabeth then went on to pursue a second bachelors degree, in Nursing, at the University of Rochester. Upon their return from Antarctica, Elizabeth plans to enter a masters program in nursing and continue her career in healthcare. That is unless she falls in love with phytoplankton or penguins in Antarctica and decides to devote her life to studying them. When she is not busy saving lives or filtering seawater, Elizabeth can be found trail running, rock climbing, or curled up with a good book.
