I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, working in Dr. Nicole Buan’s lab. I study how methane-producing microbes called methanogens make their living. These single-celled archaea live in places without oxygen, like wetlands, rice paddies, landfills, and cow stomachs. 

My work focuses on Methanosarcina acetivorans and the structure and function of enzyme complexes critical to methanogenesis. I use protein biochemistry and structural biology to understand how the parts of these complexes fit together and work as a unit. I am also developing tools to engineer M. acetivorans for new industrial applications. 

I earned my Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2025 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Dr. Katrina Forest’s lab. There, I studied the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa and proteins essential for its twitching motility and virulence. I combined bioinformatics, protein modeling, molecular dynamics, and in vitro and in vivo assays to develop the most complete model to date of the prepilin peptidase. 

Before that, I was a 2019 Mitchell Scholar at Dublin City University in Ireland, where I earned an M.Sc. in Science and Health Communication and studied what drives political polarization around science policy issues in democracies. 

The other half of my work is science policy. I founded and serve as the volunteer director of the Wisconsin Science, Technology, and Engineering Policy Fellowship (WI STEP). The program will place scientists in legislative service agency offices, so that lawmakers have reliable, trusted sources for evidence-informed policy deliberations and scientists learn how policy actually gets made. 

I’ve also worked on policy from a few other angles. At UW–Madison, I served for two years as co-president of Catalysts for Science Policy, the student group for graduate students and postdocs interested in science communication and policy, and I was the 2024 Fenwick Fellow for the Advancement of Civic Science for the American Society for Microbiology. I’ve also advocated for federal science funding and antimicrobial resistance policy through multiple Hill Days with ASM.

I want to build a career at a land-grant university, where I can run a research lab and support students who want to engage with their communities, take part in democracy, and work with government. The land-grant mission is about serving the people of the state, and I want my science and my service to be part of that.