I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As a member of the Heath Lab (PI: Katy Heath, Associate Professor in Plant Biology), I am specifically interested in understanding the genetic underpinnings of how nitrogen-fixing bacteria, also known as rhizobia, adapt to both the free-living (i.e., soil) and symbiotic (i.e., host) environments using a combination of experimental evolution approaches, genetic manipulations, genomic sequencing, and bioinformatics. While changes in standing genetic variation and de novo mutations are known to play a role, we currently do not know how acquiring genes horizontally (i.e., versus vertically acquired via descent) influences adaptation. To read more about my research, you can check out my website, or my google scholar page
