About Me

What I do

I’m a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In this role, I develop and teach courses that often have a component or focus in science communication to both scientific and lay audiences. As part of my role, I lead the Biology Senior Honors Thesis course and symposium and organize the Biology undergraduate posters sessions.

Overall, I see my day-to-day role as helping students become better biologists and communicators of science. I enjoy developing materials for class, but I also enjoy the interactions I have with students–both in and out of my courses. When I was a student, I seriously undervalued interactions with my professors outside of a classroom and I encourage my students to take advantage of opportunities to connect.

How I got here

I began my academic career at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where I majored in Biology. While there, I had the opportunity to work in the lab of Dr. Marv Wickens. As an undergraduate researcher, I helped on a project where my role was to engineer chimeric PUF proteins to test their binding element preferences. This experience sparked my interest in molecular biology. Prior to coming to college, I didn’t know that being a scientist was a career option, outside of movies and TV.

I stayed at UW-Madison to pursue a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, in the lab of Dr. Melissa M. Harrison. My graduate work focused on understanding transcriptional regulation during Drosophila melanogaster embryogenesis. In this work, I solidified my interests in genomics and epigenetics.

After earning my Ph.D. in 2019, I moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to join Dr. Robert Duronio’s lab as a postdoctoral fellow. There, I investigated the role of chromatin organization in genome replication. As a postdoc, I was first part of the Cancer Epigenetics Training Program before transitioning to the SPIRE IRACDA program in order to persue my interest in teaching and mentorship. During my time as a SPIRE Scholar, I taught courses at UNC Pembroke including a novel course.