Bio

I am a postdoctoral researcher interested in disease ecology and what drives infections across different species and biological scales. I am particularly fascinated by urban ecology and the potential of pathogens to spread to and between humans and animals.

I completed my Bachelors in Biology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2018. I was a PhD student in the lab of Justin Bahl at the University of Georgia and graduated in 2023. As a student in the Institute of Bioinformatics I was involved in multiple computational projects studying the transmission of RNA viruses such as HIV and different influenza viruses (human, swine, avian). My Phd thesis work focused on studying the transmission dynamics of human seasonal influenza on the national and international scale using genomic data and paired antigenic assay data to study important patterns of transmission and evolution. This work involved the development of methods to integrate different types of data such as case counts and timing of epidemics to make more informative models of virus transmission. I was fortunate to be able to study as a fellow in the Interdisciplinary Disease Ecology Across Scales program in the Odum School of Ecology where I learned about the many ecological methods and models that can be applied to questions around disease ecology.

In my free time I enjoy taking my dogs out to trails, and watch/read all things sci-fi and fantasy.