Research: Evolutionary Genetics and Gene Regulation

Background

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Duke University’s Program in Genetics and Genomics (UPGG) in Dr. Gregory Wray’s lab. My research interests revolve around evolutionary questions in the natural world, leveraging functional genomics methods to understand organismal adaptation and variation. To this end, my current work seeks to understand how epigenomic and structural factors interact to affect population genetics of hybridizing species in the diverse clade of Heliconius butterflies, in collaboration with teams at George Washington University and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. I am also funded by a James B. Duke Fellowship and the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship.

I completed her undergraduate studies at Wellesley College, where I wrote an honors thesis in Dr. Andrea Sequeira’s lab on the transcriptomic responses and adaptation in an invasive, asexual beetle species. After leaving Wellesley, I moved to Dr. Pardis Sabeti’s lab at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT under the mentorship of Dr. Steve Reilly, working on human functional genomic characterization with the ENCODE Consortium. I then became the lab manager for the newly minted Reilly lab as it opened its doors at Yale in the fall of 2021. My work at Yale focused on the functional characterization of positively selected human variants, especially those within genetic regulatory elements, as well as consciously building the framework for an inclusive lab environment as the Reilly lab’s first member.

At Duke, I am involved in science communication and outreach programs such as the Carolinas Butterfly Monitoring Program and the Science Research and Education Network (SciREN). I am also a member of the Society of Duke Fellows. Outside of the lab, I enjoy horticulture, making coffee, watching standup comedy, learning to rollerblade, and hiking or backpacking.

Publications