I am a biology educator dedicated to sharing my passion for evolutionary biology and the natural world with students. I find the connections made with students as they their develop critical thinking and scientific inquiry skills to be deeply fulfilling. It is the central reason as to why I pursue a career in biology. Currently, I'm a visiting assistant professor at Berea College where I teach courses in human and comparative anatomy, in addition to introductory biology. 

More broadly, I'm an evolutionary biologist with a strong interest in fish feeding morphology (especially teeth). My research combines a suite of tools including dissection and tissue microscopy, microCT scanning, and geometric analyses of shape to understand how and why different fish feeding structures evolve. I utilize a comparative approach that uses phylogenetic trees, which represent the evolutionary history and relationships between species, as a statistical framework. This research leverages museum collections and online data repositories to build large-scale datasets of fish ecomorphological traits that equip me to answer questions that address how feeding processes influence patterns of organismal form at the macroevolutionary scale.

Feel free to browse my website and reach out if you have any questions or are interested in discussing pedagogy or research!