I grew up in the Mojave Desert of Las Vegas, where I enjoyed catching lizards and looking for fossils. As a young undergrad at UNLV and later at BYU, I developed a passion for understanding the natural forces driving the patterns we can observe in earth’s organisms. This included my favorite animals, reptiles, but eventually expanded into broader questions that encompass all organisms- including humans. During my PhD at Auburn University, I studied the forces contributing to patterns we observe in speciation, asexual reproduction, and life history variation using tools in phylogenetics, physiology, and genomics. My research program at UTU retains similar foci, with a special emphasis on helping students develop and implement bioinformatic tools. Please reach out to me if you are interested in doing research in my lab.