I am currently a 4th year PhD student at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences where I work as a graduate research assistant for Prof. Michael Sacks in the Willerson Center for Cardiovascular Modeling. I received my undergraduate degrees (2022) at LSU in computational mathematics and biological engineering. I received honors distinction for my computational mathematics degree, writing an undergrad thesis on unsupervised machine techniques for clustering data. I also graduated with the distinguished communicator distinction by taking coursework that emphasizes presentation skills. I have recently received my master’s in Computational Science, Engineering, and Mathematics at my current program. I am very involved at Oden where I have been an organizer for the Babuska Forum, served as SIAM Vice President, and am currently serving as the Omnbudsperson for the 25-26 academic year.
My research is very aligned with the goals of the Oden Institute, relying on foundational mathematics, cutting-edge computational techniques, and domain knowledge of the problem being solved. However, I started off very far from that. I was geared toward going to college to become a medical doctor. By the time I started my freshman year, I shadowed a general surgeon for well over 150 hours and had volunteered at the local hospital system for another 100 hours. After joining LSU in 2017, I started with a biological engineering degree before I discovered the more advanced mathematics involved in research. My sole degree in biological engineering evolved to combine a minor in mathematics to a secondary concentration finally ending on enough credits to make a fully separate degree. By time I finished my undergraduate degree, I had completed over 180 hours of coursework across almost all disciplines of STEM.