As an ecologist, I seek to understand how biodiversity accumulates and diminishes as well as the consequences of such change, especially through introduction of invasive species and extinction at regional scales and greater. In all of my projects, I ask: “What broader patterns can be identified and generalized to other systems or novel scenarios?” To address this question, I leverage publicly available data, natural history collections, and data science methods to analyze relationships between phenomena and variables that may help explain empirical patterns. This approach has made me an advocate for open and reproducible science, thereby shaping my goals to include tool development for both researchers and stakeholders.
In the iEcoLab, I satisfied my life-long penchant for amphibians and reptiles through the study of Caribbean lizard extinctions and pursue new taxonomic horizons through investigations of the relationship between the spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) and its plant hosts.
I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation in Summer 2022. Since defending, I have accepted an offer to be a data scientist on the analytics team at CCS Fundraising, which is a consulting firm that works with nonprofits to transform their fundraising. CCS Fundraising works with many different clients, including those directly tied to conservation (ccsfundraising.com).