Berk is a Ph.D. candidate and a senior member of Aquatic Biogeochemistry Lab of Dr. Silvia Newell. His research mainly focuses on nitrogen transformations, harmful algal blooms (HABs), and hypoxic events in Lakes Erie and Superior. 

His research interests also include paleolimnological reconstruction and paleoclimate proxies. Before joining Newell Lab, he focused on Late Pleistocene and Holocene paleoclimate records of lake sediments in the Eastern European Plain as a scholar at St. Petersburg State University. Central Anatolia and the coastlines of the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas of Türkiye are other locations he studied during his undergraduate and master's studies.

His current research aims to understand the relative roles of nitrogen cycling for cyanobacterial biomass in the water column and sediment-water interface on the development of HABs and Hypoxia in Lake Erie, as well as testing whether nitrogen cycling is phosphorus limited in Lake Superior.