I first became interested in biology when I was in middle school and the Human Genome Project was (fully!) underway. I thought the idea of sequencing the entire genome of anything was just so cool. Later, I got interested in evolution, thanks to great undergraduate research mentors. In graduate school, I wanted to combine my early love for genomics with my love for evolution. Luckily, high-throughput sequencing data made it possible to collect genomic data for all kinds of critters with interesting evolutionary pasts. Figuring out how to analyze the data, however, required me to learn to love computers.

• A love for biology
• Patience
• Organization
• Collaboration
• Creativity

I am mainly self-taught in computer programming. Additionally, I took a brief break from academia post-PhD and worked at a tech company, during which time my colleagues helped me learn Python and math. In particular, they reviewed my code and pointed out ways to make it more efficient and cleaner to read.

In fact, that remains the best way to improve my coding: looking at how others solve the problem. Stack Overflow is an amazing resource to see how others solve the same problem you are trying to solve.

I am interested in two questions:

• How recombination evolves in wild populations of organisms, which I currently study in Australian birds.
• The genetics of species divergence, which I currently study in Australian lizards and Mexican sunflowers.

It is never to late to start integrating computer science into your work!