I’m a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley with joint appointments in the Departments of Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS) and Plant and Microbial Biology (PMB). I am co-advised by Professor Daniel Stolper in EPS and Professor Patrick Shih in PMB. I am also currently an Agouron-Resnick Postdoctoral Fellow of the Life Sciences Research Foundation (LSRF).

I received a Ph.D. in Geochemistry from Caltech in 2023, where I was co-advised by Professor John Eiler in the Division of Geological and Planetary Science (GPS), and Professor Dianne Newman who holds appointments in both GPS and Biology and Biological Engineering (BBE). I also worked extensively with Professor Woody Fischer in GPS.

During my Ph.D., I also completed a Graduate Research Assistant internship at Los Alamos National Laboratory through the Department of Energy (DOE) Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program.

Scientific Interests

I’m interested in how biology carries out the difficult, biochemical reactions that make life possible on Earth. I focus on a specific subset of enzymes - those that use small molecule gases like the ones found in our atmosphere (e.g., carbon dioxide (CO₂) and nitrous oxide (N₂O)). Small molecule gases are biochemically challenging to activate, so these “gas-dependent” enzymes are often the metabolic “bottlenecks” of individual organisms and whole ecosystems. Therefore, understanding the evolution, function, and diversity of gas-dependent enzymes tells us something foundational about the co-evolution of life and Earth (and, possibly, on other planets). In addition, these enzymes have been the focus of intense bioengineering efforts across numerous industries like agriculture, chemical synthesis, and climate tech because their reaction mechanisms may inspire new tools to address societal issues in food production, manufacturing, and greenhouse gas mitigation.

Technical Approach

My approach is to systematically measure the kinetics of enzymes across diverse organisms - in isolation (in vitro), in the organism (in vivo) and in microbial assemblages. A central tool in my work are measurements of kinetic isotope effects (KIEs), which measure how enzymes fractionate stable isotopes during catalysis. KIEs are broadly used for two reasons: 1) In the Earth sciences, they form the basis of ecological models that are used to infer elemental cycling from measurements of stable isotopes (e.g., the evolution of the carbon cycle over time; the source and fate of the greenhouse gas N₂O); 2) In biochemistry and biophysics, they are used to infer enzyme reaction mechanism because they give information about the transition state. Therefore, I combine techniques in isotope and analytical chemistry (isotope ratio mass spectrometry; cryogenic gas distillation under high vacuum), biochemistry (protein purification; enzyme kinetic assays), and microbiology (culturing microbes; deleting genes and measuring phenotypes; soil incubations of complex communities).

Selected Honors and Awards