Leveraging genomics and microbiomes to drive human health advancement.

I grew up on the California coast and completed my Bachelor's in Animal Science from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo as hopeful future veterinarian. My curiosity about microbiomes was sparked as the student manager of Cal Poly's sheep ranch, where I first learned about soil microbes and carbon farming. This led to pursuing a Master's degree in Soil Science from University of Wyoming, where I worked with Dr. Linda van Diepen to discover how soil bacteria and fungi respond to different intensities of cattle grazing. During my years in Laradise, Wyoming, I nurtured a growing passion for the microbiome sciences and pivoted to the human gut microbiome. I completed my Ph.D. in Integrative and Biomedical Physiology & Clinical and Translational Sciences from Pennsylvania State University, where I was co-advised by Drs. Erika Ganda and Connie Rogers. Here, I expanded my skillset in bioinformatics, sequencing data analysis, murine experiments, meta-analysis, and clinical science. Throughout my training, I discovered a curious lack of research in non-bacterial members of the gut microbiome, and my perspective from soils sparked a key question -- what is going on with fungi in the human gut? 

I dug into that question during a postdoc with Dr. Seth Bordenstein at Penn State, where I tackled two fundamental drivers of gut fungal assembly; associations with human genetic variation, and eco-evolutionary patterns of humans and their mycobiomes. I grew my scientific skillset and crash-coursed genomics and evolutionary biology to round out my computational biology background.

Currently, I am a Staff Scientist at Geisinger Health in Dr. Eric Carruth's group, where I analyze large cohorts of electronic health records data and whole-exome sequencing to unravel the genetic underpinnings of cardiomyopathy, a rare but serious form of heart disease. I work closely with cardiologists and clinical genetic counselors to translate our research to the clinic and am greatly enjoying the challenge of applying my comp bio skills to EHR and big genomics datasets. 

I am the happiest when tackling a new challenge by building a custom R function and enjoy training in diverse scientific disciplines. I am always open to new opportunities and ways of thinking. When I'm not doing science, I can usually be found on a nature walk, adopting senior Great Danes and mastiffs (and one cat who believes he is a Great Dane), or knitting socks.