Experience

APHL - Association of Public Health Laboratories

• United States
• Non-profit Organizations
• 200 - 300 Employee

• Association of Public Health Laboratories and Centers for Disease Control Bioinformatics Fellow

  • Jul 2019 - Present

  Evaluated and implemented bioinformatics solutions for the rapid characterization and genomiccomparison of both chromosomal and extrachromosomal antimicrobial resistance (AMR) markersamong carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) and carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonasaeruginosa (CRPA) isolates using Illumina MiSeq and Oxford Nanopore MinION hybrid genomeassemblies.Determining optimal bioinformatic pipelines for reference-free cluster detection using multiple-sequence alignments (MSA) of shared orthologous genes to determine phylogenetic relationships of health care-associated (HAI) outbreak pathogens.Examination of HAI pathogen genomes for the presence of prophage-mediated AMR genes.Wrote and validated Dockerfiles (VAPiD, StarAMR, VIBRANT, VIGOR4) for the State Public Health-Bioinformatics (StaPH-B) consortium.Taught introductory infectious disease bioinformatics to state laboratorians, epidemiologists, and public health scientists. Lecture content included sequencing read data quality assurance, read processing, and biological interpretations of data that lead to public health action.Developed infectious disease bioinformatics unit content with hand-on exercises for undergraduates. Students learned how to assess bacterial isolate sequence quality, assemble genomes, and screen genome assemblies for Antibiotic Resistance Markers using StarAMR on GalaxyTrakr.



James Madison University

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Graduate Research And Teaching Assistant

  • Aug 2017 - May 2019

  Development of the comparative genomics platform for HHMI’s SEA-PHAGES program, involved in programming, database development, and supporting end users.Studied novel bacteriophage anti-CRISPR proteins and their interactions with host CRISPR-Casdefense systems using NGS WGS (Illumina MiniSeq and NanoPore MinION) and bioinformatics.Managed, mentored and trained one high school teacher, one high school student, twoundergraduate students, three laboratory preparation staff members and a new lab technician inproper aseptic technique, bacterial culture maintenance, viral archiving and inventory maintenance



James Madison University

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Laboratory Technician

  • 2016 - 2017

  Developed a bacteriophage genome browser used by HHMI’s SEA-PHAGES program, was involvedin the programming, database development, and support of end users. Was responsible for taking inventory and ordering of laboratory supplies

• Undergraduate Research Assistant

  • 2015 - 2017

  Mycobacterium smegmatis lysogens were produced and used in sensitivity assays to determine thecommon characteristics of cluster L bacteriophages.