Academic Ontogeny

I attended the University of Northern Iowa where I received bachelors degrees in chemistry and biology. I began my scientific career by participating in an NSF REU where I discovered conditions necessary to create highly aligned DNA nanofibers through controlled evaporative self assembly. Following graduation from UNI, I enrolled at Iowa State University to pursue further interests in population dynamics, genetics, and conservation biology, ultimately with the goal of studying forest trees. The following summer (2011) I was hired to work a seasonal position at Teakettle Experimental Forest through the research groups of Matthew Hurteau (Univ. New Mexico) and Malcolm North (UC Davis, USFS).

In early 2012 I was accepted into the Integrative Life Sciences Ph.D. program at Virginia Commonwealth University. I defended my PhD dissertation adivsed under Andrew Eckert in his Plant Evolutionary Genomics Laboratory at VCU in 2018. Shortly after I moved to Vancouver, BC Canada to work with Sally Aitken, Sam Yeaman, and Richard Hamelin on the CoAdapTree project. Please see my research page to learn more about my interests, view current projects, as well as the aims and goals of my graduate dissertation. To learn more about my personal interests beyond academic pursuits see my hobbies page.