Fear of the unknown
Since childhood, Sahara Ríos-Bonilla has always loved science and nature. And although that passion once felt like an unattainable career path, Sahara persisted and forged a future as a researcher, inventor, and Knauss Fellow.
Sahara grew up along the teeming and lush coast of Puerto Rico with an ironic and inexplicable fear of deep water. She enjoyed the ocean and what it provided, just as long as she could see her feet, because beyond that lay the fear of the unknown.
Discovering her passions
When Sahara started her undergraduate degree at the University of Puerto Rico, she decided to study civil engineering, following in her parents’ footsteps who were both engineers. During her classes and studies, however, she realized it didn’t move her. She was good at it, yes, and could succeed, but she was not passionate, so she switched her major to biology. It was during these classes that Sahara also discovered a love for chemistry, the science that “glues nature together,” and so she added an environmental chemistry minor.
The environmental chemistry lab was where she discovered her love and talent for research, as a research assistant working on applied nanotechnology. She worked to develop three nanomaterials that aided in removing contaminants from freshwater. Her involvement in freshwater remediation ignited her curiosity about the impacts of pollutants generated inland and their effects upon reaching the ocean. But this eagerness to help remediate ocean water pollution would require confronting her fears of deep waters.
“You fear what you don’t understand” is one of Sahara’s favorite quotes, and the one that motivated her to explore the ocean she was afraid of.
“If you want to confront your fear, learn from it, you know? You have to first understand why it’s a fear,” Sahara said.
Her deep desire to learn more about the world and its interconnectivity, coupled with the drive to face her personal fear, compelled Sahara to continue her education, embarking on a master’s degree in chemical oceanography at the University of Puerto Rico.
Before heading off to graduate school, she decided to get certified as a scuba diver. She wanted to discover if immersing herself in the foreign environment to learn about it would put her mind at ease. After Sahara took her pool courses, she headed out to the open ocean, and although she was incredibly nervous, she jumped in anyway.
“To my surprise, it was completely the opposite of being scared. It was a state of mediation. I find it very interesting how you feel hugged by the ocean because you have the pressure of the water all around you.”
Sahara Ríos-Bonilla
Making the most out of unexpected challenges
When Sahara was still an undergrad in 2017, Hurricane María struck Puerto Rico with unbelievable force; ripping trees out of the ground, creating a vacuum of silence where animal noises once had been, and decimating the chemical oceanography lab Sahara had intended to work in two years later. It wasn’t until she had committed to the program and begun taking classes that Sahara learned the research facilities were not going to be repaired.
“I decided that instead of being negative or pessimistic about it, and saying this is not ideal, you can always turn or flip the pancake, as I say,” Sahara said. “I decided that if I couldn’t do research in the area that I’m personally interested in, that I’m going to use the time [getting my master’s] to have as many experiences as possible.”
Over the next two years, Sahara worked for NASA as a research assistant working on a light pollution project, as a mariculture lab and field technician for Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and at the Caribbean Coastal Ocean Observing System, a part of NOAA, as a coastal observation and field technician and chemistry teaching assistant. In these roles she practiced collecting and analyzing data, communicating complex topics, and running experiments like sea water analysis and seaweed growth monitoring.
During the end of her chemical oceanography master’s, Sahara’s friend alerted her to an ad they had seen detailing a full-ride master position at Villanova University. A professor was looking for a Puerto Rican Spanish-speaking student to do a thesis on marine debris and plastic pollution in Puerto Rico. It was exactly what she had proposed as her original thesis idea for her previous masters, and so she applied; for the love of science, research, and her coastal community.
An ideal opportunity
To her surprise and delight, she was selected.
During the next two years, Sahara worked under the leadership of Dr. Lisa Rodrigues, a professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at Villanova University. Sahara traveled between Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico, collecting marine debris to study the role of plastic pollution as it floats downstream to the southwest coastline of the island. She joined local communities to perform beach cleanups, listen to their concerns, and shown them why it’s critical to reduce single-use plastics in the Caribbean.
Sahara finds immense pride that the communities she taught continue to host beach clean ups, and that these sites are now the cleanest they have been in the last decades. And they continue to spread the knowledge as to why doing so is important to other nearby communities.
During the project she found plastic trash coming from West Africa and Brazil, highlighting how marine debris can travel hundreds of thousands of miles with ocean currents. This led her to start thinking about how this trash may be breaking down into microplastics and how marine life may be ingesting it.
Her next project, the first of its kind, used the lionfish, an invasive fish species from the Indo-Pacific now found in the Caribbean Sea, as a proxy to biomonitor microplastic exposure for native species.
Sahara organized a group of diver friends in Puerto Rico, who collected 56 lionfish and sent their gills and guts to the Villanova laboratory, where she analyzed the tissues for microplastic bioaccumulation. What she found was astonishing, and not a hopeful prognosis for other Caribbean-native marine species.
Of the 56 lionfish individuals examined, 98% had microplastics in their guts and 79% had microplastics in their gills.
The Knauss Fellowship and the future
At the conclusion of her environmental science master’s degree, professors at Villanova and Sahara’s friends encouraged her to apply for the Sea Grant John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship.
The Knauss Fellowship is a one-year paid fellowship that matches highly qualified graduate students with “hosts” in the legislative and executive branches of government located in the Washington, D.C. area, for a one-year paid fellowship. As part of the placement process, all Knauss candidates meet with representatives from each of the host offices. The purpose of the week-long process is to pair the fellow with the host office that best aligns with their interests and experience. At the end of the week hosts and applicants are paired.
“The imposter syndrom hit strong that week,” Sahara said. “For me, it was so bad I became physically sick on the second day.”
Sahara fell ill with a throat infection, which made it difficult to speak, and by the end of the week when it came time to be placed with her host office, she asked the universe to make sure herself, as well as the other 87 Knauss Fellows, ended up in the position most suitable for them.
Sahara was matched with NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration as the Deep Sea Sample Strategy Fellow working to optimize deep sea sampling paradigm for the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer. Sahara recognizes the irony of entering this role, once a child fearful of the deep ocean but motivated by her desire to face her fears in the only way she knew how: knowledge.
I’m so inspired by each of them. They’re incredible people doing some amazing work. So, when you put it like that and say to yourself, ‘Wait a minute, I’m among these people, doing my own little thing’ – it makes you realize, yeah, I’m okay.”
Sahara Ríos-Bonilla
Each day looks different and the projects vary. Sahara is excited to be working on scientific optimization and to be surrounded by such passionate colleagues.
“We all really want to serve the public. I think it’s important to remember, because if you are outside of public service, you don’t know the quality of the heart of the people who show up every day to do great things,” Sahara said. “It’s important to highlight the things that are worth celebrating, too. For example, that the workers in this federal agency are true to their values and their morals, and they are true to a good mission.”
At the conclusion of her fellowship, she hopes to work for NOAA but is open to other opportunities in similar fields. Sahara wants to help people learn more about their environment and how to keep it healthy. She will continue running and expanding the Puerto Rican non-profit EcoAzul, which she co-founded in 2023 with her oceanographer colleagues. This organization aims to bridge the gap between scientists and researchers with local communities to help them address coastal environmental issues.“Having a strong educational outreach component is important because education is really what makes a long-term impact,” Sahara said. “You can try to solve something, you can clean and restore an area, but if you never take the time to educate the local community about why it matters – in a few months or years it will go back to its original state.”
Written by Grace Sawyer, Edited by Kelly Donaldson
Grace Sawyer, summer 2025 digital communications CEI intern is a senior at James Madison University in Virginia, where she is working toward a Bachelor of Science in Media Arts and Design (Journalism Concentration) and a minor in Biology. Grace has also written feature stories about Nathaniel Edelheit-Rice and Chelsea Russ, 2025 Knauss fellows. Grace also works with AKSM Media in Washington, D.C., as Chief White House Producer where she attends and photographs press events, conducts interviews, writes news articles, and navigates security clearances for other AKSM reporters.
