About Me

I am a biogeochemist that studies molecular fossils to reconstruct ancient climates.

Personal background

I was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, in the heart of the Midwest. Exploring the forests and fields around my house was a seminal part of my youth, and where I developed strong, connective ties with the natural world. I loved catching fish and turtles in the neighborhood creek, hunting for bones in the woods, making ‘field sketches’ of animal footprints left in the dirt (complete with pages of corresponding notes, taken down from my library books—of course!), and sorting through the rocks at my school playground in search of fossils. Looking back at the evidence, perhaps it is no small surprise that I found a way to channel my passion and interest in the natural world into a career!

Educational background

I am currently a Ph.D. Dual-Title Candidate in Geoscience and Climate Science at Penn State in the final year of my dissertation work.

I attended the University of Iowa from 2016 to 2020. I first learned about geology as a career path while taking a course my freshman year, ‘The Geology of U.S. National Parks’, taught by Dr. Kate Tierney. Following the main portion of this course, students attended a 2-week field trip to several National Parks in the American Southwest. It was during this field trip that I decided to change my major (previously plant biology) to geoscience, having become enamored with the subject material and field opportunities it proffered. I graduated in Spring 2020 from the University of Iowa with a B.S. Honors in Geoscience. My senior thesis research, a study examining the high-resolution chemostratigraphy of a Silurian core conducted with Dr. Bradley Cramer, was published in Global & Planetary Change in 2021.

I began my graduate studies at the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) in Fall 2020 working under the direction of Dr. Kate Freeman. I completed my M.S. in Geoscience in 2022, and immediately continued on within the program to work towards my Ph.D. My M.S. project focused on disentangling human from climate-driven landscape changes in the Central Mediterranean using lipid biomarkers and compound-specific isotopes. My Ph.D. research expands upon this work, and will aim to reconstruct temperature and hydrologic change from multiple sites within the Central Mediterranean using a combination of lipid biomarkers, compound-specific isotope analyses, and carbonate clumped isotope analyses.