I am a coral reef researcher with a passion for the ocean and international exploration.

Originally hailing from Nashville, Tennessee (USA; 800 km from the nearest ocean), Anderson began his coral reef research career in Bermuda twenty years ago as part of an exchange program with his alma mater Duke University (USA). This was followed briefly by study abroad and volunteer research stints on the Great Barrier Reef and the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico), respectively. In 2003, Anderson moved to Hawaii to work with the late Dr. Ruth Gates at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology on 1) developing molecular tools for probing the physiology and health of coral-dinoflagellate endosymbioses and 2) characterizing the cellular mechanisms underlying the coral bleaching phenomenon. Upon obtaining his PhD in 2009, Anderson moved to Taiwan, where he spent 11 years working at their National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium (NMMBA) as part of a series  of publicly and privately funded post-doctoral research projects.

One such project involved a series of research cruises with the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation (LOF) as part of their "Global Reef Expedition," which gave Anderson the opportunity to dive and sample corals from all over the Indo-Pacific, not limited to French Polynesia, Fiji, Tonga, Solomon Islands, & elsewhere. Anderson continues to work closely with NMMBA and LOF to this day and is particularly interested in working with both institutes, as well as local collaborators, to profile the health and resilience of corals in the two most biodiverse reef systems on Earth: the Philippines and Indonesia, collectively constituting the "epicenter" of the Coral Triangle.

In 2019 Anderson moved back to the United States to undertake a three-year contract research project at the University of Miami's Cooperative Institute of Marine and Atmospheric Studies (funded by the USA's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). This project began as a coral molecular eco-physiology project seeking to profile the protein profiles of thermally challenged Caribbean corals but grew into a much greater work on using machine-learning and other advanced predictive modeling and data analytical approaches to forecast the future of coral reefs.

Although maintaining his long-standing interest in coral molecular eco-physiology, microscopy, molecular methods development, and coral and reef health assessments, Anderson's primary focus these days is to deliver the most advanced training to a global network of Reef Rangers through the Coral Resilience Institute.