I was born and raised as a California kid from the Central San Joaquin Valley. For the last 10 years, I have pursued three A.A.’s at Santa Barbara City College and a B.S. in Molecular biology with a Chemistry minor at California State University Monterey Bay. I am the product of the Universities Undergraduate Research Opportunity Center Scholar program where I developed my identity as a researcher. Through this program, I was an undergraduate researcher in the Logan lab where I studied juvenile and larval rockfish physiological responses to climate change using enzyme assays, next generation sequencing, and bioinformatics. In 2017, I was awarded the Sally Casanova Pre-Doctoral Scholarship which allowed me to complete a summer research internship in the Puritz lab conducting the first de novo Exome assemblies of the Eastern Oyster. My PhD work at URI will be focused on developing de novo techniques and bioinformatic pipelines for phylogenomic analysis and exploring the adaptation of the Eastern Oyster immune system in response to disease and climate change. One fact about me, I love the ocean and SCUBA as much as I can, but if I am in a swimming pool…I still think Jaws is gonna get me. Find more here!