Kayla Haas: As Long As There’s an Ocean [Women to Watch]

In 2024, graduate student Kayla Haas was awarded one of three Dieter Family Scholarships by the Marine Technology Society (MTS) to attend the MTS and OCEANS conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Haas, a graduate student working toward her master of science in marine biology at the University of California, San Diego, was excited but slightly intimidated. From what she could tell, the conference seemed tailored to the engineers who designed and built marine equipment, not the scientists like her who used it. Still, for Haas, who has been planning for a career in marine biology since she was a child, volunteering at the conference was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up.