As mentioned in my last post I defended my dissertation last week, and successfully passed! It was a great experience and I think it went very well! Thanks to everyone who has supported me throughout my PhD, and to my amazing committee members! Below is a photo of me with my two Smithsonian committee members, Dr. Kris Helgen and Dr. Jesus Maldonado. 

After six years of graduate research I am defending my dissertation on Thursday July 9, 10:30 am at the George Mason University Fairfax campus. I'm also happy to announce the reason for moving up my graduation date is due to receiving a postdoctoral fellowship through the Henry Doorly Zoo, Omaha NE. I will be switching focal research areas from Sundaland, to Madagascar! I will get to go do field work, and research the genomics of lemurs. I'm very excited about the new chapter of my life!

My first first-authored paper has been accepted to Molecular Ecology Resources. This paper was a collaborative effort from many lab members at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute's Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics. This paper will soon become available online, and will wait until 2016 to be published in a special issue of MER- on Sequence Capture.