I am a Professor in the Mathematics and Statistics Department at UAF with interests in phylogenetics, —and mathematical biology more generally—, algebraic methods, latent class models in statistics, and teaching. I earned my Ph.D. and M.S. in algebra at UCLA under the direction of Murray M. Schacher.

In 2013, I was elected a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in its inaugural class.

Upcoming and recent exciting activities include the New Zealand Mathematical Society's Vaughan Jones Lectureship, Fall 2027, ICERM's fall 2024 semester program: Theory, Methods, and Applications of Quantitative Phylogenetics, and SLmath's 2025 summer school on sea ice and polar ecosystems modeling at UAF.