Nicole D. Fogarty

Although I grew up in Ohio, far from any ocean, I was driven to become a marine biologist since age 10. At 14 years old, I learned to SCUBA dive and saw my first coral reef; it was love at first sight. After graduating from Vandalia-Butler High School in 1994, I attended Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. During my undergraduate career, I studied marine biology at the Bermuda Biological Station, the Bahamas Field Station in San Salvador, and at Duke University’s Beaufort Marine Laboratory. After graduating from Wittenberg in 1998, I moved to the Florida Keys where I had a variety of positions including: science instructor at Newfound Harbor Marine Institute at Seacamp, an outreach coordinator at The Nature Conservancy, and a scientific technician at UNCW. After a temporary, contract appointment at NOAA’s Beaufort, North Carolina Laboratory in 2003, I began my PhD at Florida State University. My dissertation focused on understanding how Caribbean acroporid hybrids are formed, and why they might be increasing in abundance. After receiving my PhD in 2010, I began a Marine Science Network Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian Marine Station in Fort Pierce, Florida. In July 2012, I was hired by Nova Southeastern University as an assistant professor. In January 2019, I took a faculty position at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. In 2025, I became the Center for Marine Science's Associate Director of Education and Outreach.

Education

P.h.D. in Biological Science, Florida State University
B.A. in Biological Science, Minor in Environmental Studies, Wittenberg University

Specialization in Teaching

BIO 202 - Principles of Biodiversity
BIO 363 - Coral Reef Ecology
BIO 495 - Sex in the Sea: The quirky reproductive strategies of marine critters
MSC 595 - Graduate Seminar in Marine Science

Research Interests

With the worldwide decline of coral reefs, it is crucial to understand how local and global stressors that reduced coral densities influence coral reproductive success. My lab conducts basic and applied research to better understand the stressors driving coral mortality, and how to optimize coral husbandry for restoration. Our state-of-the-art spawning facility at UNCW's Center for Marine contains coral spawning tanks that mimic the environmental conditions in Florida and a 36-tank experimental system where temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and light can be manipulated. Over the past 6 years, we have repeated spawned four Western Atlantic coral species in our ex situ system. We conduct interdisciplinary research through collaborations with microbial, developmental, and molecular biologists, comparative physiologists, chemists, and restoration practitioners.

Honors & Awards

Funding: >$3 million awarded to Fogarty from 14 entities + >$2.5 million to collaborators