Dr. Berwald received her PhD at USC working on satellite imagery of the oceans.

 Dr. Berwald’s career path took her away from academics into the world of textbook writing but then eventually back to the oceans with her first book, Spineless, about jellyfish and learning to find her own backbone as a writer. In her most recent book, Life on the Rocks, Berwald travels the world exploring the problems that coral reefs face in today’s seas, and the ways that humans and corals are responding to those crises. Dr. Berwald’s writing is acclaimed for braiding together personal memoir with science, and this book also contains the story of her daughter’s struggle with mental illness, finding parallels in the reef’s invisibility and in the beauty of small successes. Life on the Rocks is a finalist for the LA Times Book Award.