BIO
I grew up in New Haven, CT and stayed in my hometown to earn a B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale. I then worked as a research assistant in Erika Edwards’ lab, focusing on two projects: one exploring the evolution of an unusual type of photosynthesis that may have allowed the plant genus Portulaca to expand into new environments, and the other investigating whether environmental pressures drove Latin American Viburnum to repeatedly evolve three particular leaf shapes. Before joining the Keller lab in 2023, I lived in Egypt and studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo. While I got to see some extremely cool desert plants in Egypt, I’m excited to be back in snowy New England to research forest tree adaptation to climate change, with support from the NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship. In my free time, I enjoy reading, knitting, and cooking with friends.
I’m broadly interested in why plants live where they live, if and how they will adapt to climate change, and how genetic factors interact with the environment to influence evolutionary trajectories. As a first year PhD student, I am involved in two rotation projects. In the fall, I used genomic offset modeling to help select red spruce trees likely to be well-adapted to future climate change for planting in a restoration seed orchard in Bristol, VT. Currently, I am rotating in the Preston lab and using molecular biology methods to characterize candidate genes involved in vernalization in the grass species Brachypodium.
Bio
I grew up in New Haven, CT and stayed in my hometown to earn a B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale. I then worked as a research assistant in Erika Edwards’ lab, focusing on two projects: one exploring the evolution of an unusual type of photosynthesis that may have allowed the plant genus Portulaca to expand into new environments, and the other investigating whether environmental pressures drove Latin American Viburnum to repeatedly evolve three particular leaf shapes. Before joining the Keller lab in 2023, I lived in Egypt and studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo. While I got to see some extremely cool desert plants in Egypt, I’m excited to be back in snowy New England to research forest tree adaptation to climate change, with support from the NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship. In my free time, I enjoy reading, knitting, and cooking with friends.
I’m broadly interested in why plants live where they live, if and how they will adapt to climate change, and how genetic factors interact with the environment to influence evolutionary trajectories. As a first year PhD student, I am involved in two rotation projects. In the fall, I used genomic offset modeling to help select red spruce trees likely to be well-adapted to future climate change for planting in a restoration seed orchard in Bristol, VT. Currently, I am rotating in the Preston lab and using molecular biology methods to characterize candidate genes involved in vernalization in the grass species Brachypodium.