I am a systematics and ecology graduate student in the Botany Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I received my bachelor’s degree magna cum laude from Cornell University in 2005, and worked at a natural history museum in Ithaca, New York for several years between college and graduate school. My research interests are broadly the evolution and ecology of plants, in particular the seed-free vascular plants. My Ph.D. research integrates phylogenetic systematics and ecophysiology in a study of the fern genus Dryopteris (Dryopteridaceae).

Photos: view from Cerro de la Muerta paramo in central Costa Rica; fiddlehead of Adiantum pedatum, maidenhair fern; sori of Asplenium rhizophyllum, the walking fern.