cv

Curriculum Vitae

Education

  • 2024 –
    PhD, Genetics, Bioinformatics & Computational Biology
    Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA
    • Wright lab (from Spring 2025), co-advised by David Haak
    • Translational Plant Science Center Graduate Assistantship (Fall 2024 – Fall 2025)
  • 2022
    B.S. Biotechnology, cum laude
    Kent State University, Kent, OH

Research experience

  • 2025 –
    Graduate researcher, Wright lab
    Virginia Tech
    • Auxin / ARF genomics and RNA-seq differential expression
    • Applications of computer vision, artificial intelligence and data science to plant science
  • 2019
    VT-REEL summer research fellow, Haak and Derr labs
    Virginia Tech
  • 2017 – 2022
    Undergraduate researcher, Case lab
    Kent State University
    • Leaf area and perimeter measured from photographs of dismembered Lobelia sect. Lobelia vouchers (ImageJ, LeafArea), supported by NSF award DEB-2015606
    • Whole-plant Lobelia silhouettes reconstructed from herbarium sheets (2018 – 2019)
    write-up

Presentations

  • 2026
    The parasitic plant Phelipanche aegyptiaca adapts gene expression to different host species (poster)
    Translational Plant Science Center Symposium, Virginia Tech
    • J. Arnold, S. Kaur, C. Wright, D. Haak, S. Park, J. Westwood
    poster

Awards

  • 2017 – 2022
    Choose Ohio First Scholarship
    Kent State University
  • 2022
    Clinton & Olive Hobbs Endowment Botany Scholarship
    Kent State University
  • 2022
    Dr. and Mrs. Robert W. Squires Scholarship
    Kent State University

Research projects

  • 2026
    orchid-clip — orchid identification with a fine-tuned BioCLIP 2
    • Per-genus top-1 0.768 → 0.844 over BioCLIP 2 on a 14-genus holdout; the demo reports genus and names a species only when confident
    write-up
    code
    demo

Software (archived on Zenodo)

  • plant-genomics-mcp — 50+ plant-genomics tools over 23 public backends via the Model Context Protocol
  • data-aggregator-mcp — research-data discovery across Zenodo, DataCite, NCBI omics and the literature
  • plantcv-mcp — PlantCV trait measurements returned with the overlay they came from
  • phylokit-mcp — phylogenetic inference that always reports branch support
  • breedsim-mcp — breeding-scheme simulation reporting results across replicates
  • Taxon3D — blind comparison benchmark for generative 3D models of organisms
  • ghostcite — deterministic detection of ghost citations and retracted references
  • jobd — self-hostable GPU-aware job broker with agent (MCP) integration

Skills

Computational R, Python, Linux/Bash, HPC, RNA-seq analysis, ImageJ and computer vision, MCP/LLM tooling
Wet lab PCR (RT-PCR, nested PCR), DNA/RNA extraction, gel electrophoresis, bacterial transformation
Plant Plant care, seed collection and sowing, image collection and analysis