Originally from Morgantown, West Virginia, I received my BS in Biology from West Virginia University in 2021. It was here that, through my work with Dr. Rita Rio on bacteria in tsetse flies, I was introduced to the study of endosymbiosis: cells living inside other cells. Shortly thereafter, I left for Arizona to work in John McCutcheon's lab where I study the Hodgkinia cicadicola endosymbionts of cicadas.

Broadly, I am interested in how compartments, genomes, and biomolecules representing very different types of life (e.g. bacteria and animals) interact in a cell biological context. Specifically, I would like to understand how these intracellular interactions evolve in pathogens, host-beneficial endosymbionts, and organelles. Host-beneficial endosymbionts of insects are particularly exciting study systems because some of these bacteria have experienced a remarkable degree of gene loss, seemingly relying on their host cells for the construction of their envelopes and even for basic information processing and protein synthesis. Advancements in microscopy and structural biology are increasingly enabling us to puzzle out the eukaroytic cell biology that allows these tiniest bacterial genomes to exist. (Check out this review for more on the subject!)

While I love the stereotypical work of biology — from trudging around with a bug net to poring over samples at the microscope to parsing huge files using regular expressions — my real love for the discipline comes from the richness of its many unique stories waiting to be pieced together, written, spoken, read, and heard. Its dual character as an empirical and an historical science captivates me and motivates me to understand a diversity of biological narratives through the study of non-model organisms.