I fell in love with animals, biology, and the study of evolution at a young age.

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Every time I visited my family in Hawai'i, my fascination was kindled further. I was simply awed by the unique forms of life around me, how much biodiversity had been generated in such a short timeframe, and how improbable the proliferation of life across the ocean on these tiny, tenuous islands seemed.

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What equally interested and saddened me were the extinctions that have plagued Hawai'i, as well as the animals that were still declining or struggling.

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Today, the same topics of island evolution, biodiversity, and conservation still fascinate me. In my undergraduate research, I studied the California Channel Islands system's island fox, and plan to revisit this system to study the island deer mouse.

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Scientists have often described islands as 'natural laboratories', in which similar organisms adapt to a variety of environments. These kinds of systems (most famously the Galapagos) have led to a wealth of discoveries in the patterns and mechanisms for how evolution works as a whole.

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I will leverage the 'genetic libraries' available in museum specimens of island deer mice to tease out the specific demographic history and population genetics of these subspecies. I am excited to answer the basic questions of how animals evolve, how island ecosystems affect evolution, and how changes in the genome and morphology correlate.