I am a Canadian Ph.D. student here at RSMAS working towards a career in research focusing on holobiont microbial ecology and evolution. I completed my B.Sc. at Carleton University in Canada working under Dr. Nigel Waltho, focusing on benthic community phase-shifts and disease ecology in Caribbean coral reefs at the Cape Eleuthera Institute (CEI) in The Bahamas. Following my B.Sc. I worked as a research technician at CEI conducting research assessing coral reef health during the 2014-2017 global bleaching event and taught marine ecology to high school students. I received my M.Sc. at Memorial University of Newfoundland working under Dr. Suzanne Dufour focusing on prokaryotic (and viral) communities in deep-sea soft corals. I started my Ph.D. in MBE in spring 2019 to explore various diseases using a combination of molecular techniques (SSU rRNA amplicon sequencing), traditional culturing and microscopy, and imaging (FISH) in an attempt to finally uncover the unknown causative agents responsible for various coral diseases.