Hello! My name is Olivia and I am a rising senior at the University of Arizona majoring in Information Science, Bioinformatics, and Molecular and Cellular Biology. I work in Dr. Ryan Gutenkunst’s lab studying population genetics. My most recent project involves inferring demographic histories and distributions of fitness effects of populations of wild house mice. To do this, I used genomic data and computational methods to learn about how the populations of mice have changed over time (growing, shrinking, how long ago did they divergere, etc.) and how correlated the effects of mutations are between pairs of populations. Our hope is that this work will help us understand the biological drivers behind differences in how mutations affect different populations. For example, are there mutations associated with certain genes that are harmful in one population and not another? And is there a
biological or ecological explanation for this difference? After graduation, I plan to attend graduate school to study computational biology. Outside of school and research, I enjoy refereeing soccer and spending time with family and friends.
