I completed my PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from Western University where I studied different surface markers on the bacteria Streptococcus pyogenes and how they contribute to nasal and skin infections in mice.

As a current post-doctoral fellow in the Kozak lab, emerging viruses are our specialty. I have had the opportunity to work with the Canadian-based pharmaceutical company Providence Therapeutics in studying the efficacy of a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 that expresses additional antigens along with spike in a mRNA booster regimen. In this work, I became proficient at working in both the in vitro and in vivo BSL3 facilities at the University of Toronto. My projects have shifted now to focus on Mpox (formerly monkeypox virus) since the largest known human outbreak of Mpox to date emerged in 2022. We have been studying a cohort of participants in Toronto that were diagnosed with Mpox disease during this outbreak and have recently published our findings looking at the longitudinal detection of Mpox DNA from multiple anatomical sites in these participants. My current focus is now determining whether tecovirimat (TPOXX) treatment had an effect on the duration of Mpox shedding in lesion swab samples from this cohort, as well as characterizing both the virus and host transcriptomics in these lesion swab samples.