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My primary area of focus is how molecular data can reshape how we answer questions in community ecology and evolutionary biology. Studying the interactions between species and the consequences for those interactions on evolutionary timescales is fascinating using traditional techniques, but applying modern sequencing-based approaches opens doors to understanding how changes in ecological networks occur under the hood. My research and teaching have been shaped by those core interests. I integrate ecological and environmental problems across my work to apply genetic and genomic data to answer questions in novel ways and apply that data in ways ranging from quantifying difficult to observe taxa, such as microbes, to evaluating specific genes of interest that result in successful interactions between organisms and their environments. Most recently, I have used metabarcoding analyses to assess the causes of endangered species decline and understand the costs of urbanization on community health, SNP genotyping to know how plastic defense phenotypes first emerge from existing genes, and RNAseq to understand how the earliest incorporation of endosymbionts may have been managed.

In my work with students, I combine my interests with questions we generate about the ecological communities around campus and how we can learn more about challenges in our part of the biosphere. I've developed a set of research pipelines that allow us to move from question generation to collecting samples through processing data in programs like QIMME2 or other command-line software. One of my main goals in working with these questions is helping students connect the core concepts they learn in their coursework to how we can apply that knowledge in practice.