​I started my journey by attending St. Mary's College of Maryland, where I obtained a bachelors in Biology and Psychology. There I became very interested in behavioral research, particularly on birds, after an engaging class field experiment on Northern Mockingbird vocalizations. I decided after graduating to join Drs. Robert Dooling and Gregory Ball's joint lab at University of Maryland College Park as a research technician and eventual lab manager, where I studied auditory perceptual abilities and vocal communication in canaries, zebra finches and budgerigars.
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I started graduate school in 2017 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under Dr. Mark Hauber, where my research focused on the unique nest defense calls produced by Yellow Warblers. These referential calls, known as "seet" calls, are used to warn of nearby Brown-headed Cowbirds, brood parasites that lay their eggs in other birds' nests. Using playbacks of seet calls, cowbird calls, and other nest-related threats, I explored the sensory ecology and mechanisms underlying seet call use. Through this work I also discovered that Red-winged Blackbirds, another host of cowbirds, actually eavesdrop on Yellow Warbler seet calls and use their warnings to boost their own frontline defenses against brood parasitism. In August 2022 I earned my Ph.D. in Integrative Biology with a focus in Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior. 

After graduate school, I decided to branch out and hone my science communication and writing skills, since I found that talking with the public about my research was always one of my favorite parts of the job. As such, in 2022 I joined the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign as a postdoctoral science writing fellow. There, I wrote pop-sci articles about the cool research published at the university and the scientists that made it happen! In 2023 I was also recruited as a part-time science writer for the Advanced Science Research Center at the City University New York. During this time I learned so much about science communication and journalism, and I am now a strong advocate for actively communicating science findings to the public in clear and interesting ways. 

In Fall 2024, I started working as a postdoctoral scholar at Oregon State University under Dr. David Kikuchi. Here, I study whether birds possess visual templates for recognizing signals associated with dangerous snakes, and the role of social learning and ecological context in shaping their responses. Stay tuned to learn more!