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Research Interests:

 

From a young age, I was fascinated with many things, chief among them being field guides and logic puzzles. The former became a love of biology and later biochemistry. The latter became an interest in algorithm design, and in programming as a means of transforming theory into function. When it came time to pick a college major I couldn't choose between those two fields, so I just studied both. 

 

Over the course of my undergraduate and graduate studies, I developed an interest in the regulation of gene expression and its many facets: microRNA, transcription factor binding, DNA methylation, and more. Bioinformatics proved an excellent place to be to ask and answer questions about the complicated interplay between these forces. I also jumped at any opportunity I could get to work on a new topic, whether that was cryo-EM image analysis or evolutionary immunology.

 

Originally, I pursued these interests in the context of medicine and human disease. I stopped short of going to medical school, but I wanted to be involved in medical research because of its potential to reduce human suffering. I've found my way here to agricultural genetics instead, which is equally interesting and capable of improving people's quality of life, albeit in a different way. Regardless, that thought motivates me when I'm banging my head against the desk because of a stubborn piece of broken code!

Education:

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• B.A. in Computer Science and Biochemistry, Mount Holyoke College

• M.S in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Yale University

 

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