About Me

I am currently a Postdoctoral Associate within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University. I work with Mike Gore and Ying Sun focusing on the development/application of crop growth models using remote sensing data. I completed my Ph.D. in Plant Biology/Molecular Plant Sciences at Michigan State University where I worked with Berkley Walker studying plant physiology and biochemistry. Prior to that, I earn my B.S. in Biology with minors in Chemistry and Leadership Studies at Slippery Rock University.

Research Directions

  • Plant Physiology Interests: I am broadly interested in understanding the physiological constraints placed on plant performance by their environment. Moreover, I have spent a most of my time in academia exploring the unique challenges plants will face in future climate conditions. This has led me to pursue a variety of research questions that sit at the intersection of remote sensing, plant physiology and biochemistry.

  • Programming/Modeling Interests: I have found that programming (primarily in R) has provided valuable assistance in helping me construct, validate, and visualize biological phenomena in my research. Whether pre-processing unstructured data, evaluating specific variables through modeling, running descriptive statistics, or data visualization, all have helped me make informed decisions and conclusions about my research.

  • Educational Research Interests: I have found through my experience in higher education, that teaching/mentoring provides me with a sense of fulfillment untouched by my research efforts. When thinking about teaching the next generation of scientist/leaders in STEM, I resonate the most with this quote from (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005):

    • How do we make it more likely — by our design — that students really understand what they are asked to learn?

    There are scholarly approaches to teaching and learning which can be implemented and analyzed to assess student learning. I found that using some of these approaches during my academic experience has enhanced my ability to teach/mentor.