I grew up in New Hampshire and spent a lot of my time doing outdoorsy stuff (hiking, riding horses, playing winter sports, especially hockey), playing music (fiddle/violin, piano, and teaching), and reading. I was homeschooled and mostly self-taught but I took a biology course at the local community college when I was fifteen and was henceforth hooked on research.
I've had the great privilege of working in a variety of study systems. My science career officially began in the woods of NH where as a freshman at UNH I spent rainy spring evenings searching for red-backed salamanders hidden in leaf litter. I transferred to Cornell to focus on birds and spent several years conducting fieldwork and thinking about life history trade-offs in Tree Swallow populations of Ithaca, NY. I also participated in two research expeditions documenting the natural history of Old World suboscines in Malaysian Borneo. After graduating I spent a summer surveying Yellow-billed Cuckoos in southern California, and then embarked on my Masters degree at the University of Florida, studying wading birds and an invasive python in the sawgrass marshes of the Florida Everglades. It was then that I internalized that ecology only makes sense in light of evolution, and I became excited by what we can learn about the history of life and the process of adaptation by reading and interpreting genomes. In the last three years I have learned so much about genetics and had a blast. I am enthralled with my current study system of Australian honeyeaters and the amazing continent they live on.
Education
2019 - present PhD candidate Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
2015 - 2018 M.S. University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
2009 - 2012 B.S. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Field Skills
Mist-netting (traditional and aerial netting), banding, avian blood collection (brachial venipuncture), avian morphometrics, non-lethal egg microsampling of albumen, camera-trapping, environmental DNA sampling, GPS navigation, airboat operator (>120 hr), outboard motor operator (>20 hr), fixed-wing aerial surveying, avian specimen field prep (fluid, spread wing, study skin, schmoo) and permitting, trained in tree-climbing, collecting digital media incl. avian sound recording, attaching radiotags, telemetry
Lab Skills
Environmental DNA methods (single-, multi-channel pipetting, sterile technique, filtering water), droplet digital PCR, quantitative PCR, traditional PCR, electrophoresis, phenol-chloroform DNA extraction, plasmid digestion, optimization of synthetic mini gene standard curve for eDNA detection assay, serial dilutions for ddPCR plate standard curves, troubleshooting QX200 ddPCR methodology, Qubit 3.0 fluorometry, spectrophotometry, inhibitor removal troubleshooting (with Zymo and Mo Bio kits), microsatellite methods, thorough protocol documentation
Data Analysis Skills
Experienced in managing and proofing data, occupancy modeling using Bayesian methods, statistical analysis using generalized mixed linear models, multivariate statistical analysis, phylogenetic generalized least squares analysis, character mapping, microsatellite kinship analysis, basic transcriptomic analysis (Bioconductor packages), script submission to the University of Florida HiPerGator 2.0 super-computing complex, version control in Rstudio using GitHub
Software Proficiency
Basic: Mathematica, html, Access, Raven, CERVUS, mySQL
Intermediate: GitHub, QGIS, arcGIS, LaTeX, MATLAB, Microsoft Office, GeneMapper, Quantasoft
Advanced: R