I am a graduate student in the Cattolico Lab, in the Biology Department at the University of Washington.

I am fascinated by how evolution acts on microbial populations. The ability to actually witness evolutionary processes occuring at human time-scales and to examine those processes through experimental manipulation has been a highlight of my graduate education.

My research has addressed the ecophysiology, population dynamics and adaptive evolution of bloom-forming algae. In addressing those issues, further questions have been posed:

• How do life history characteristics impact an organism's ability to adapt to a dynamic environment?
• If adaptation increases fitness in one environment, what are the evolutionary costs in other environments?
• Given that evolution is unpredictable, can we predict how unpredictable an evolutionary trajectory may be, and what information is needed to make that prediction?

During Spring 2007 I am co-leading the UW's Evolution and Systematics seminar series.