My first love in biology was development (thanks to Kaye Edwards at Haverford) and that is what I pursued for my PhD with Cynthia Kenyon. As I finished my PhD I became fascinated by trying to understand how organisms modify their development in response to the environment. Thankfully fellow graduate student Lee Honigberg dropped a paper on my desk reviewing plant response to their light environment and I was hooked. I went to Joanne Chory's and Detlef Weigel's labs at The Salk and started a program on the quantitative genetics of plant light responses. I am still fascinated by light regulated development and shade avoidance. Over time I have also become more generally interested in how plants respond to their environment and how these responses evolve to allow plants to adapt to different habitats. I have always also loved computer programming and am excited to be participating in the application of computational techniques in biology.