I've always been interested in understanding how living things work. I got hooked on microscopic life when I had the opportunity to volunteer in a microbiology lab at Oklahoma State University in high school. There, I watched, amazed, as a simple drop of bacteria in solution turned into a plate full of colonies, with thousands of individual cells, overnight!

During my undergraduate at Geneva College, I conducted microbiological research with Dr. David Essig. Under his tutelage, I learned how to conduct independent research projects, design scientific questions and experiments, analyze data, solve problems, and understand how my Christian faith impacts my research. In graduate school at Oregon State University, I studied in the lab of Dr. Steve Giovannoni, where I learned how to work with challenging microorganisms, persevere in the face of difficulties, and work on a team.

Currently, in my work as a lecturer at the University of Waikato, I'm working with the extreme microbes of Antarctica, especially those living in the hot soils of Mt. Erebus, the southernmost active volcano in the world. My first project on Erebus, with collaborators across New Zealand and both sides of the US, sought to discover new microbes and metabolisms in one of the most extreme environments in the world. Our field work involved drilling at multiple sites around the summit of Mt. Erebus, using metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, and culturing to characterize the microorganisms present at the surface and subsurface.

My newest project, which I will be the lead for, is studying the photosynthetic bacteria living on Mt. Erebus, with the goal of understanding how these photosynthetic bacteria survive three months of winter darkness every year. We are using field manipulation experiments and lab-based physiology experiments for this study.