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Research interests: Evolutionary theory, sexual selection, life history theory, avian evolution
I am a Ph.D. student working under Maria Servedio in the Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology program at UNC Chapel Hill. I graduated from the University of Colorado in Boulder, my hometown, with a double-degree in Population Biology and Mathematics in 2002. My undergraduate research included a thesis on nest-site selection and territory selection in Lark Sparrows Chondestes grammacus strigatus, a medium-sized grassland songbird. From 2005 to 2008, I worked as a biostatistician in the Pediatric Psychopharmacology Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, conducting research on the diagnoses and treatment of mental disorders.
Although my career has included mostly research on wild populations of songbirds, I have shifted my current research focus to general questions of evolutionary mechanisms, especially sexual selection. I am especially interested in the role of sexual selection in life-history evolution. See my Research page for more.
My interests outside of evolutionary biology include a passion for mathematics and computer science. I love using Unix (GNU/Linux), and I advocate for software freedom. I am also very interested in the history of science and society, especially the history of Britain. In the pure enjoyment category, I love cooking, drinking tea, listening to great music, and playing my banjo.
Feel free to email me about any of the above topics, I always like meeting new people.
