I am a fifth-year PhD candidate in the Weis Lab and studying thermal stress on cnidarian-algal symbiosis. In 2016, I graduated from Emory University with a B.S. in Environmental Science and a secondary major in History. There I studied the transmission of West Nile virus from Culex mosquitoes in Atlanta, Georgia at Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec's lab. After undergraduate studies, I joined Teach for America and taught high school biology and middle school integrative science for four years in Stockton and Oakland, California. I became interested in cnidarian-algal symbiosis when I worked for a summer at John Pringle's lab in Stanford University. There I worked with Dr. Phillip Cleves on projects related to acclimation of Aiptasia to thermal stress and the genetic response of Aiptasia to light and dark treatments. For my research, I am interested in the effects of thermal stress on the breakdown of cnidarian-algal symbiosis (i.e., cnidarian bleaching) and the molecular and cellular mechanisms essential for heat tolerance and recovery. Two of my current projects look at the growth and development of pedal lacerate under heat stress and the functional role of the sphingolipid pathway in symbiosis and dysbiosis.