I am a broadly trained biologist with current research interests in how organisms maintain their genetic information during the process of cell division and a passion for sharing my love of biology with students both in the classroom and in the lab. I have a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Harvard University. My doctoral research in the lab of Dr. Darren Higgins used molecular biology, genetics and cell biology approaches to identify and characterize host cell factors required for intracellular infection by the bacterial pathogen Listeria monocytogenes. After graduate school, I joined the lab of Dr. Judith Berman in the Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development at the University of Minnesota as a post-doctoral fellow. As a post-doctoral fellow, I developed the yeast Candida albicans as a model system to understand chromosome segregation mechanisms. My research is particularly focused on understanding how flexibility in the size and position of centromeres and kinetochores contributes to control of genome stability and influences the development of resistance to drug resistance and stress adaptation. Following my post-doc, I was an Assistant Professor of Biology (term-faculty) at Grinnell College for two years. I am now an Assistant Professor of Biology at Gustavus Adolphus College.