I am originally from New York, but headed south to pursue my undergraduate degree at Eckerd College, a small, liberal arts school in St. Petersburg, FL. I chose Eckerd due in large part to a strong emphasis on teacher-student relationships (and in small part due to the palm trees), and it was there that I was inspired to pursue a scientific career.

Following my undergraduate degree I worked as a cardiology tech in NY for a year before starting graduate study in the Genetics department at the University of Georgia. At UGA I worked in John McDonald’s lab (now at GA Tech) researching endogenous retroviruses. In 2004 I completed my doctorate and began a SPIRE (Seeding Postdoctoral Innovators in Research and Education) fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that combines teaching, research and service. As a postdoc I've taught several courses over two semesters at Shaw University in Raleigh as well as an online version of Genetics and Molecular Biology for UNC. In my research I work on genome evolution in Todd Vision’s lab in UNC's Biology Department.