My interest in autoimmunity and the microbiome stems from a family diagnosis back when I was in high school, igniting my desire to have my own lab and setting me on the course of academia. My origin story includes 3 years at Moorpark College. Needing research experience myself, I joined projects captive-rearing endangered butterflies and studying astrophysics… whatever it took to get experience! This became the basis of my plan to include community college students in my future lab. I then transferred to UCI where I majored in Microbiology and Immunology, graduating in the class of 2019. I made a quick, 6-year detour to Houston, Texas where I received my PhD in Immunology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine in the lab of Katy Patras. That is where I found a passion for women’s health and began to incorporate sex-based differences in disease to my research plan. I hope to incorporate the skills and enhanced understanding of biological mechanisms that I learn in the Nicholas Lab to my future work interfacing rheumatology and the reproductive tract microbiome.