I study life in Earth's most remote marine ecosystems across scales, from the physiology of individual organisms to the connectivity of populations. My work spans from hydrothermal vents in the Eastern Pacific to mesophotic and deep-sea coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico and greater Caribbean. I use genomic tools such as metabarcoding, population and comparative genomics, and transcriptomics to understand how benthic invertebrates disperse, recruit, and connect across patchy habitats on the seafloor.

I grew up in metro Detroit and later moved to Michigan's Upper Peninsula to study ecology and mathematics at Northern Michigan University. After graduating, I was a guest student at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where I fell in love with larval ecology and the deep sea.  Studying life at great depths demands as much comfort with electronics as with biology, and I picked up robotics skills as a lab technician at Harvard University before starting my PhD. At Lehigh University, in Dr. Santiago Herrera's lab, my dissertation examined molecular perspectives on mesophotic reef network connectivity and community assembly in the Gulf of Mexico. These experiences have shaped my approach to marine science, grounded in curiosity, technical resourcefulness, and a commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration.

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I am currently a Postdoctoral Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory, investigating mitochondrial mechanisms of maternal age effects. Here, I am refining molecular skills in an experimental system. I plan to carry these into a future research program using Swiftia exserta to study reproduction and recruitment in mesophotic and deep-sea octocorals. 

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