News

June 2025: Designed and taught "Introduction to R for Biodiversity Research" for undergraduates at the University of Hawaii. Teaching coding skills to the next generation of botanists. 🧑‍💻

May 2025: Started work on a new NSF-funded project exploring the genomics of the Bidens radiation on Hawaii. 🧬🌼

March 2025: Presented an invited talk at the Sonoma State University Biology Colloquium on island biogeography theory and recent research advances. Great audience of mostly undergraduates! 💬

November 2024: Joined Dr. Rosemary Gillespie's EvoLab at UC Berkeley as a visiting student researcher. Finishing up my PhD chapters remotely from Berkeley.  

October 2024: Moved back to California ☀️

August 2024: The first chapter of my PhD thesis which explores the global island biogeography of Asteraceae was published in Nature Communications! 🚨🗞️

July 2024: Attended the International Botanical Congress in Madrid and presented new PhD research on the community of Asteraceae on Hawaii and the Mascarenes. 💬

April 2024: Presented an invited talk at the dos Reis lab group meeting on species delimitation, evolution, and conservation in the Fitchia and Oparanthus (Asteraceae) radiation. 💬

April 2024: Gave a presentation on my recent fieldwork to the Naturalis Botany group.  💬

March 2024: Fieldwork on the Society Islands (Tahiti, Moorea, Raiatea, Tahaa) in French Polynesia collecting and studying the endangered Fitchia radiation with local collaborators. 🏝️

February 2024: Led a Naturalis Journal Club session on the topic of eponyms in taxonomy - are they an issue and how should the taxonomic community deal with problematic species names? 

February 2024: Hosted the Kew PAFTOL (Plant and Fungal Tree of Life) team at the Naturalis herbarium and helped sample Asteraceae for Hyb-Seq.

February 2024: Gave a tour of the Naturalis herbarium and an introduction to collections research for the University of Groningen Island Biology MSc course.

January 7-11, 2024: Presented the preliminary results of the 2nd chapter of my PhD on Hawaiian Asteraceae at the International Biogeography Society conference in Prague. 💬

January 2024: Awarded an Alberta Mennega Foundation grant.

January 2024: New website! Finally completed my "small" pandemic hobby/goal of building a personal website....only 4 years later than originally planned.