About

I am a research assistant professor at the University of Florida Emerging Pathogens Institute and am associated with the Spatial Epidemiology & Ecology Research Laboratory (SEER Lab). I focus on defining relationships between microbial communities, their environments, and their hosts. My work bridges wet-lab microbiology, long-read sequencing, and computational biology.

My doctoral research centered on environmental microbiome characterization, including low-biomass bioaerosols and spatial patterns in the St. Lawrence River. More recently, I have studied connections between the Bacillus anthracis and its geospatial distribution as well as gut microbiome and neurological conditions all using culture-independent workflows.

I have worked with Sanger, Illumina, and Oxford Nanopore sequencing technologies, from experimental design and nucleic acid extraction through high-performance computing and downstream analysis.

Research interests

• Environmental and host-associated microbiomes
• Oxford Nanopore sequencing
• Bioinformatics workflow development
• Low-biomass sampling and analysis
• Metagenome-assembled genomes
• Gut–brain interactions

Methods

Languages: R, Bash, and Python

Sequencing platforms: Sanger, Illumina, and Oxford Nanopore

Microbiomes: Bioaerosols, water, gut, anaerobic digestate, and dust

Laboratory techniques: Bioaerosol collection, DNA and RNA extraction, RT-PCR, mRNA isolation, and Nanopore sequencing

Computational techniques: Basecalling, 16S rRNA classification, metagenomic analysis, metatranscriptomics, and metagenome-assembled genome construction