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I am originally from Oxford, North Carolina, located about 30 miles north of Durham. In 2001, I graduated from North Carolina State University with a B.S. in Natural Resource Management. During my time at NC State, I became interested in pursuing a career in research through the part-time jobs I held in the Departments of Crop Science and Plant Pathology. In 2001, I began work in NCSU’s Fungal Genomics Lab, part of CIFR (Center for Integrated Fungal Research) where I participated in a project involving a pathogenicity screen of fungal mutants of Magnaporthe griseaon rice plants.
Since joining the Heitman lab in 2005, I have been involved in a number of projects with several graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in the lab that include studies of genes involved in virulence of C. neoformans, sexual reproduction in Candida lusitaniae and in Cryptococcus neoformans diploids, identification of sex-determination genes in Phycomyces, and characterization of the MAT locus of Cryptococcus. I am currently involved in studies exploring potential drug targets and novel antifungal therapies for treatment of Cryptococcus and Candida infections, as well as managing the lab.