Hi, I’m Rachel. I am an evolutionary ecologist and a recent PhD from the graduate program in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at UMass Amherst. I was part of Dr. Jason Kamilar’s Comparative Primatology Laboratory and am now a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Dr. Todd Disotell’s Molecular Primatology Laboratory.
My research interests are broad and include the microbiome and metagenomics, disease ecology, and phylogenetic comparative methods. My dissertation research focused on how the environment and host evolutionary relationships affect the microbiota of wild and captive lemurs. I am also passionate about democratizing science and fostering a dialectical approach to biological research.