
I’m Andy, nice to meet you!
Here, you can learn all about the cool adventures, science, and storytelling I have gotten to do over the course of my career.
I earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Minnesota State University with minors in Math and Spanish. I spent a couple weeks in a field ecology course out in the Big Horn Mountains and a couple months abroad in Ecuador studying Spanish. My undergraduate research project was using mathematical models to describe immigration patterns of populations isolated on nearby islands. I did a Ph.D. in disease ecology in Bret Eldred’s lab at Louisiana State University. My research was on predators and viruses that attack the same prey/host and I spent time in Costa Rica for a tropical ecology course. I did a postdoc with the USDA in Madison, WI under Johanne Brunet and spent two summers traveling through the country to collect samples of wild carrot and study the ecology of feral alfalfa. In my current role, I get to do all kinds of fun and cool things from writing research grants and science stories to coordinating local outreach events, leading recruiting booths, and coordinating international conferences.
Explore My Research!
Understanding the ecology of transgenic alfalfa has been a passion of mine for about half a decade. Even though I’ve moved on from my postdoc, I still work on research with my former advisor and never pass up a chance to collect roadside alfalfa!

Read a Science Story!
My favorite story so far to write has been the rediscovery of the 150-year-old plesiosaur skeleton cast found at Vanderbilt. The cast was purchased in ~1875 by James Safford from renowned fossil and cast distributor Henry Ward. It was lost to time in the 1990s and rediscovered in the 2020s. The story was so cool, it was covered by the Vanderbilt Hustler in September 2024 and featured in the Vanderbilt Magazine’s Spring 2025 issue!