I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Colorado Anschutz. I am affiliated with 4 graduate programs at CU Anschutz, Computational Bioscience, Human Medical Genetics and Genomics, Microbiology, and the umbrella Biomedical Sciences.

We develop computational approaches — integrating comparative genomics, protein sequence-structure-function analysis, and machine learning — to understand how microbes adapt to different niches and how hosts respond to infection, toward drug repurposing. Our methods are microbe-, host-, and disease-agnostic; we work across pathogens from Mycobacteria to ESKAPE pathogens to environmental bacteria. We also release open software and web apps for broad community use.

I trained at Virginia Tech (PhD, Computational Biology), Rutgers PHRI (postdoc), and started my faculty position at Michigan State before moving to CU (2022). I’m an editor at mSystems and have co-chaired the EvolCompGen COSI at ISMB.

I also teach fundamentals of data analysis, visualization, and reproducible research, especially programming in non-traditional settings. As part of this effort, I founded R-Ladies East Lansing and R-Ladies Aurora, and co-founded Women+ Data Science and AsiaR, organizations that promote leadership and technical networking opportunities in data science via meetups & webinars (featured in the CU newsletter).