I am broadly trained as both a population geneticist and ecologist, with a strong background in bioinformatics and statistics. Originally from upstate New York, I did my undergraduate degree at SUNY Plattsburgh, doing research on flying squirrels (with Danielle Garneau) and largemouth and smallmouth bass (with Tim Mihuc). I then worked at the University of Vermont (with Ellen Marsden) as a fisheries technician focusing on juvenile sea lamprey out-migration. I moved to Illinois for my master's degree at Eastern Illinois Univeristy (with Robert Colombo) where I did a population genetic study on channel and blue catfish in large Midwestern Rivers. Following that I moved to Texas to get my PhD at Texas State University (with Noland Martin and Tim Bonner; Eat 'em up!) where, among a lot of different fisheries related topics, I focused on hybridization and introgression along with phylogeography of fishes. I was also involved with a mark-recapture study of freshwater mussels, where we developed and implemented a Bayesian robust design mark-recapture model. After Texas, my postdoc was done at the University of Georgia (with Andrea Sweigart; Go Dawgs!!) working on the model system Mimulus, where we are working to understand hybrid incompatibilities between closely related species using recombinant inbred lines, in addition to a population genetics study of wild populations from California.