Research Interests: My research broadly focuses on evolutionary biology and genetics. I am interested in understanding how environmental variation and natural histories influence population structure, local adaptation, and genomic architecture. This has allowed me to work on a variety of invertebrate and vertebrate study systems throughout my academic tenure. I received my MSc from San Francisco State University and the California Academy of Sciences where I studied the evolutionary history, biogeography, and morphological evolution of nudibranch sea slugs. During my PhD research at the University of Nevada, Reno, I utilized population genetics to understand how coevolutionary interactions shape predatory and defensive traits in garter snakes and newts
Current Research: Currently, I am working with Dr. Michael Buchalski at California Department of Fish and Wildlife and Dr. Benjamin Sacks at UC Davis on a California Conservation Genomics Project. The focus of the project is to characterize population genetic structure and chronic wasting disease in Mule Deer. We aim to gain a better understanding of processes that may have influenced spatial structure of Mule Deer across California and describe genetic variation associated with susceptibility to chronic wasting disease by utilizing whole genome sequencing data.