Profile

Hi all! I am a New York City native living in Riverside, California to study fruit fly puberty! I currently live with my boyfriend and my very cute black cat, Tycho. Tycho loves water more than anything else — his favorite activity is sitting in the sink to drink water from the faucet.

I really enjoy science communication, which means talking with people who don’t have a background in science about the research that is being done in the scientific community. In my free time, I enjoy embroidery, drawing, and playing the guzheng (a Chinese harp-like instrument). My favorite genre of music is indie rock, and I enjoy going to concerts every few months. I also grow my own vegetables and have a lot of houseplants!

A few years ago, I found myself in a dark, cold office taking a small container of maggots (baby flies) from an unfamiliar man. This was the first crime case I helped investigate and started my path down insect studies. I wanted to learn all about how insects grow into adults, from worm-like creatures to the adult flies we see landing on poop in the park.

This pushed me to go to more school to study the specific things that cause insects to grow up — insect hormones! We use fruit flies, a model insect, to figure out how hormones can stop or accelerate the rate at which insects grow up. Some things I do in the lab every day are looking at flies under the microscope, dissecting insect brains, and using dyes to stain insect organs.

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