Advising Philosophy

My postdoctoral mentor was one of the most encouraging, kind, and engaged scientists I've ever known, and my postdoc at Duke was easily a highlight in my career. I felt immensely supported, and, as a result, my postdoc was a time of lightning scientific growth and productivity for me. I take this same approach of high expectations, high encouragement with my mentees. While I don’t always meet my own expectations in mentoring and have learned from past mistakes, I try to instill in my mentees just how incredibly talented and valued they are and that they are capable of the very best science if given the proper scaffolding of support. I strive to make expectations clear with weekly meetings and agendas. Our code of conduct and authorship guidelines were developed by all lab members.

We encourage all members of the lab to cultivate awareness of their own bias/privileges and continuously improve their listening skills so that we can have open, critical conversations. 

Our lab exists to make substantial, lasting, thoughtful contributions to evolutionary biology and to increase rational thinking in the world, and we hope to push limits and do BETTER than the status quo in all of our endeavors. In line with research, we strongly believe that diverse scientists foster new ideas and stimulate scientific discoveries.