I have known I wanted to be a field biologist since I was a small child. Inspired by enthusiastic mentors, I was lucky enough to conduct field work as early as age 11, assisting researchers of the former Urban Ecology Department of Boston College. I was also exposed to computers at an early age thanks to my grandfather, who had a degree in computer science. During my undergraduate education at Florida Tech, I gained the bioinformatics and laboratory skills to develop my own research interests to incorporate intensive field work, population genomics, and microbiology.

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I am currently working on a doctoral degree as a partner student between the American Museum of Natural History and the CUNY Grad Center. My dissertation analyzes the relationship between the gut microbiome and blood parasite infection in wild vertebrates of Sulawesi Indonesia.