I am a developmental evolutionary biologist interested in how new anatomical structures and levels of organization originate in evolution. I approach these questions through case studies of specific evolutionary novelties, combining natural history, comparative genomics, single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, and phylogenetic methods to uncover the broader principles underlying the origin of cell types and tissues.

In my doctoral work I traced the evolutionary origin of decidual stromal cells — a novel cell type in placental mammals — and showed that its origin enabled embryo implantation and thus the extended gestation characteristic of placental mammals.

I am currently an Associate Research Scientist in the lab of Dr. Ruslan Medzhitov at Yale School of Medicine where I am studying the evolutionary origin of vertebrate digestive organs — the liver and pancreas — by comparing them to the gut tissues of invertebrate chordates. This project has led me to conceptual questions about tissue- level homology and the origin of new levels of biological organization, which I propose to address at the KLI.