She earned her Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from Colorado State University and her Ph.D. in Immunology from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Her interest in regulatory T cells, and their function in maintaining gut immune homeostasis in the context of intestinal inflammation, led her to a postdoc position at the University of Nebraska where she utilized gnotobiotic animals to better understand the relationships between gut microbiota and host immunity. Here at ARCOM, she hopes to build on her prior work by establishing a research program aimed at better understanding microbiota-mediated mechanisms that influence host immunity to infectious diseases.