About

I am an evolutionary biologist that primarily works on plant evolution and polyploidy. I am especially interested in grasses as a model for polyploid evolution because of their applications to agriculture and ecological resilience. In 2024, I founded Southern Genetics LLC to conduct private research and provide botanical services to communities in North Carolina. Prior to that, I was a Marie Curie Fellow at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and a postdoctoral scientist at Duke University. I remain active in the scientific community and continue to develop teaching materials that remove computational barriers to biodiversity science. Most of my empirical work has been focused on Madagascar, where I apply evolutionary biology to pressing conservation issues.