Madison is the Marine Debris Specialist in the National Sea Grant Office. Her work supports the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act-funded marine debris competitions at Sea Grant.

Prior to this role, she was a joint 2023 Knauss Fellow in the National Sea Grant Office and NOAA’s Marine Debris Program, where she worked to enhance coordination and communication between the two teams concerning marine debris-related activities.

Madison is a marine ecologist, and earned her PhD in 2022 at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Biological Sciences. Her PhD research investigated the long-term effects of overfishing on marine food webs using stable isotope analysis and included a three-year predoctoral research fellowship at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

During her Smithsonian fellowship, Madison analyzed specimens from the museum’s collections to evaluate anthropogenic-mediated dietary shifts in marine mesopredators over the past two hundred years. Her graduate work took her to French Polynesia, Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, and Curaçao, inspiring a lifelong love for travel and marine fieldwork.

Madison holds a BA in biology from Carleton College, where she also minored in French. She is passionate about applied science and marine conservation.

Email: madison.willert@noaa.gov