Isabella Livingston obtained her B.S. in Biology with an emphasis in Zoology from San Diego State University in 2020. During her undergraduate tenure, she worked in a Microbial Marine Ecology Lab led by Dr. Elizabeth Dinsdale. Her first project evaluated the use of environmental DNA (eDNA) in conducting non-invasive biodiversity surveys. She also pursued other means for analyzing species distribution which resulted in an undergraduate thesis and manuscript. For this, she conducted biodiversity surveys at unregulated fish markets found along the western coast of India. Taxonomic identifications for the species sampled were done and tissues were collected for sequencing on the Nanopore MinION. After graduating, she acquired a position as a Research Assistant for Dr. Forest Rohwer and his lab at SDSU. Isabella was put in charge of lab work for the project developing a protocol for analyzing environmental samples for the presence of CoVID-19.
In the fall of 2021 Isabella will begin her Ph.D. as a part of the Genetics and Genomics Scholars Program at North Carolina State University. Here, she plans to use molecular biology and genetics to better understand evolution, speciation, and the intrinsic mechanisms that influence genotype and phenotypic expression.
