I grew up just outside of Worcester, Massachusetts, the “heart of the Commonwealth” and the second largest city in New England. For my undergraduate degree, I attended the College of the Holy Cross, a small, Jesuit, liberal arts college in Worcester, and majored in Biology with an emphasis on cellular and molecular coursework. I have been excited about studying science as long as I can remember, but I planned on applying that interest to a career in medicine until my sophomore year of college, when I started to conduct basic biological research for my honors thesis in the Findlay Lab at Holy Cross. In lab, I discovered a passion for uncovering the genetic mechanisms underlying biological phenomena while studying the function and molecular evolution of novel reproductive genes emerging in the Drosophila genome. I also had a wonderful experience pursuing more organismal evolutionary research while working in the Hoekstra Lab through the Harvard-Amgen Scholars program during Summer 2018. I graduated in May 2019, and I am now thrilled about the chance to continue studying genetics, genomics, and molecular evolution here at Harvard. Outside of my own lab work, I greatly enjoyed opportunities to help students starting out in college-level biology at Holy Cross by serving as a laboratory teaching assistant, STEM+E tutor, and student research mentor. In addition, I am fond of playing the piano, reading classic novels, baking, and running outside.