I am currently a Ph.D candidate in the School of Earth Sciences at The Ohio State University where I am advised by Dr. Andrea Grottoli and Dr. Michael Wilkins. I received my B.Sc. from Georgia Southern University in 2010 and my M.Sc. from Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne in 2016. I am interested in marine ecology and recently my studies have focused on the microbial communities associated with marine organisms. For my dissertation, I aim to investigate relationships between the coral microbiome and host physiology, specifically how shifts in composition of the coral microbiome may affect coral resilience to global climate change.