I grew up in the Bay Area, California, until I moved to Massachusetts for my 6th grade year, after which I returned to the Bay Area. I then moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, for my high school career before matriculating at UC San Diego.

I am very fond of traveling, having leaped around the United States a number of times, and spent time doing research abroad in Mexico and Spain. My junior year of college was spent studying in the Catalan capital of Barcelona, Spain, from which I had numerous opportunities to explore both Western and Eastern Europe. I have lived in Illinois for five years for graduate school, enjoying the extremely flat terrain and below-zero winters. I’ve been fortunate to travel to many places for conferences both within the US and abroad: some favorites included Tokyo, Montreal, Mexico City, and Lisbon. When possible, I try to go hiking and enjoy the outdoors.

I also enjoy cooking, eating, and drinking. Particularly Spanish food, since that’s where I first learned to cook for myself full-time, and it’s pretty tasty stuff. Italian, French, Mexican, and Creole are my other favorite cuisines.

For fun here is a spectrogram of me saying my name in English and then in Spanish: