Research Interests

Vibrio cholerae is a significant threat to global public health in part due to its propensity for large-scale evolutionary sweeps where lineages emerge and are replaced. These sweeps may originate from the Bay of Bengal, where bacteriophage predation and the evolution of antiphage counterdefenses is a recurring theme. I led a project to track the underlying genetics that lead to these sweeps while at UC Berkeley with Dr. Kim Seed.

My graduate research with Dr. Julie Huber focused on developing a better understanding of the temporal ecology of marine bacterial communities through biogeographic analyses. Specifically, I studied how microbial community compositions are influenced by the physical dispersal of microorganisms and by the selective environmental pressures that determine their survival over a wide range of spatial scales. 

Prior to graduate school I studied the ecology of bacterial infections in the lungs of patients suffering from cystic fibrosis at the University of Washington with Dr. Pradeep Singh. Through the use of molecular genetics, mouse-models and custom high-throughput phenotypic arrays, I helped to elucidate biofilm regulatory pathways and worked to design better antibiotic treatment regimens against Pseudomonas aeruginosa.