I am a Scientist at Stemloop Inc, a biotech startup focusing on improving environmental testing needs. I am leading Stemloop's development transcription factor based biosensors, starting with a push to market of a portable, at home test for lead in drinking water. I am passionate in biology's ability to improve the human condition, and believe that the answers to many of our most pressing problems lie in the biotech field. I have interest and skills in protein biology, high throughput screens, directed evolution, and next generation sequencing.I earned my Ph.D. from the Department of Microbiology at Boston University School of Medicine where I worked in James Galagan’s lab in the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory and the Department of Biomedical Engineering. I worked on a highly collaborative, multi-PI team for the duration of my degree and enjoyed working with others towards the completion of the project.My dissertation work took a systems biology, high throughput approach to identify a novel bacterial transcription factor responsive to steroid hormones. I worked with collaborators to integrate this protein into a fluorimetric biosensor for steroid hormones, and used directed evolution to generate variants with enhanced progesterone sensitivity and specificity.