I spent my early childhood growing up on a small island in the Philippines. When I was 10, my family and I moved to Southern California where I spent the latter half of my childhood. I then moved up north to Davis, California where I completed my undergraduate degree from the University of California, Davis majoring in Genetics and Genomics. While there, I worked as an undergraduate researcher in the lab of Andrew Whitehead, a technician for the Sequencing Core, and then as an NIH PREP scholar in the lab of Megan Dennis. My research experience ranges from population genetics to optimizing high-throughput library preparation assays to characterizing the phenotypic effect of human-specific duplicated genes. Currently, I am co-advised by Cedric Feschotte and Eirene Papadimitriou. My projects integrate both transposable elements and neurodevelopment. One of them is to characterize the evolution of POGZ and build upon our understanding of its importance in regulating chromatin accessibility. In my free time I enjoy going on hikes, tennis (trying to improve at mixed doubles), drawing, reading, and rediscovering my love for the violin!