I'm originally from the southwestern USA, and moved to the Big Apple three years ago to pursue my PhD in biological science.  My primary research interests are desert ecology/conservation and scorpion systematics.  I am conducting research at the American Museum of Natural History in association with the Scorpion Systematics Research Group and the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics.    The subject of my doctoral research is the systematics of Centruroides Marx 1890, a highly venomous genus of exclusively New World scorpions.  More recently, I have become interested in the molecular evolution of venoms and have initiated a research project to further investigate this subject.