Rebecca Marin is currently a doctoral candidate in the Biological Sciences PhD program at the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP). Rebecca was born in El Paso, Texas and graduated from Irvin High School in 1994. She has always loved science and nature since she was a child and was inspired by her tenth grade biology teacher to become a scientist. Rebecca attended UTEP where she graduated cum laude with a B.S. in Biology in 2002. As an undergraduate, she was a fellow in the Partnership of Excellence in Teacher Education (PETE) where she had the opportunity to work with a seventh grade teacher at Guillen Middle School. Rebecca was accepted into UTEP's PhD program in Biology in 2005. For her dissertation research, Rebecca is investigating the impact of land cover change, namely change in shrub cover and density, at the Indio Mountains Research Station (IMRS), an example of a Chihuahuan Desert mountain ecosystem, and its affects on ecosystem structure, function, and processes. Rebecca is passionate about science and hopes to inspire other young people into the science disciplines through teaching and research.