Current position

I am a PhD candidate in the Mike Hickerson and Ana Carnaval labs at the City University of New York, City College campus. I am currently supported as a software engineer, developing the roleShiny application and contributing to the roleR R package. Both of which provide students and researchers access to the Rules of Life Engine (RoLE) model, which is

a mechanistic, simulation-based hypothesis-testing and data synthesis framework enabling scientists with multi-dimensional biodiversity data to generate and test parameterized hypotheses about the processes driving biodiversity patterns

Research focus

My research focuses on understanding how populations, species, and communities evolve across space in response to changing environments. The spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scales I work with vary, ranging from single-species landscape genetics to global-scale macrogenetics. In addition to empirical work, I am also wading into the waters of simulation-based testing of spatial population genetic theory and software development to facilitate these types of analyses.

Previous positions

From 2016 to 2018 I completed a M.S. in Zoology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. I worked with Jason Brown on the systematics and phylogeography of a genus of poison frogs in Peru and helped develop the second version of SDMtoolbox, a python-based ArcGIS toolbox for spatial studies of ecology, evolution and genetics.

From 2011 to 2015 I completed a B.S. in Biology- Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at University of Texas at Austin. I completed undergraduate research with Daniel Bolnick, David Cannatella, and the Texas Biodiversity Collections.