I am an evolutionary and developmental geneticist studying insects. Currently, I am studying functional evolution in the insect female reproductive tract as a NIH K99 Pathway to Independence Research Scholar at UC Davis, mentored by Dr. David Begun. I completed my doctoral research on the biophysics, evolution, development, and genetic regulation of iridescent nanostructures on butterfly wings in Dr. Nipam Patel's lab at the University of California Berkeley. I enjoy relating evolutionary outcomes across timescales, from rapid artificial selection through population level variation and macroevolutionary differences among species. To leverage millions of years of naturally evolved ‘experiments’ that have explored life’s available possibility space, I work to integrate experiments in non-model insect species that evolved extreme anatomy and physiology alongside incisive genetic dissection in the model species Drosophila melanogaster.