about me

disease ecology, ecosystem health and conservation biology, data science

Broadly, I am interested in how feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes vary the impacts of emerging infectious disease across biological levels of organization. The primary motivation for my research is to work within cross-disciplinary teams to inform management and intervention decisions by leveraging a deeper understanding of the ecological dynamics that structure variation in population responses to novel stressors. Combining field-based investigations with large, public datasets, I have explored how species' life histories, environmentally dependent trait expression, and demography can influence broader patterns of disease outbreaks and population dynamics.

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I am currently a PhD Candidate in the Langwig Lab at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University where I am working on bats affected by white-nose syndrome, an emerging fungal disease that caused catastrophic population declines across North America. My dissertation has focused on the drivers and population-level consequences of sex-biased infections in collaboration with state and federal scientists and academics across multiple institutions. I have also worked within field systems to examine shifting adaptive traits with disease phase and exposure of wildlife communities to SARS CoV-2.