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- I am a Ph.D. student in my 3rd year of study
- Hometown: Northbrook, IL
- Undergrad: Lawrence University, Appleton, WI - B.A. in Biology and Spanish.
- Extracurricular Activities: I like to attend many chamber and orchestral performances offered by the University, city of Ames, and around
Des Moines. I also enjoy playing violin and reading historical fiction.
- I chose to come to ISU because of the interdisciplinary nature of the program. I was interested in exploring topics from many different perspectives and it seemed as if Iowa State had both a plethora of resources and a diverse faculty to address multidimensional questions.
- My research is focussed on insect-plant interactions of a wild cotton species, Gossypium davidsonii, endemic to the Sonoran Desert in Baja
California, Mexico. I am interested in understanding population-level variation (10-fold variation) in terpenoids expressed in several tissues of this species.
Ultimately I aim to identify potential evolutionary mechanisms by which phytochemical variation has spread within this species. I am also working on
understanding the phylogenetic relationships among several varieties of boll weevil, Anthonomus grandis, on Mexican wild cotton as well as on cotton cultivars in the United States.
- I have not yet thought much about life after graduate school, but would hope to continue to perform research in whatever career path I take.
