Student Profiles

Raised in Louisiana, I attended Tulane University to play baseball and study Cell and Molecular Biology. After suffering a shoulder injury on the baseball field, I was afforded more time to work in research labs at the Tulane School of Medicine to complement my coursework. For my first research experience, supervised by Dr. Muthusamy Kunnimalaiyaan, I explored ways to overcome therapeutic resistance in advanced thyroid cancer. I then transitioned to a virology and immunology lab led by Drs. Dahlene Fusco and Arnaud Drouin to explore Zika virus-host interactions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I became a research staff member for three of the lab’s clinical studies on COVID-19 that included an observational study and two therapeutic trials. Witnessing the importance of virology and immunology research during the pandemic inspired me to join NIAID as a post-baccalaureate fellow under Dr. Eli Boritz to learn more about how viruses could be studied. There, my research focused on method development to better understand how HIV infection persists in the presence of antiretroviral therapy.

As an NIH-Cambridge Scholar, I am continuing to study HIV persistence with the goal of identifying and describing host factors that regulate HIV latency. In the future, I hope to keep researching how some viruses, such as HIV and herpesviruses, persist indefinitely within their hosts, the relationship between virus persistence and chronic and delayed illnesses, and strategies to cure persistent infections.