My scientific interest is the role of epigenetics and chromatin in the earliest stages of embryonic development. After undergraduate studies in Genetics and Zoology at the University of Otago, New Zealand, I worked on zebrafish development in Julia Horsfield’s lab, first as an Honours student and subsequently an Assistant Research Fellow - here my interest in developmental biology was sparked! In 2015, I joined James Turner’s lab at the Francis Crick Institute for my PhD, catching the epigenetics and chromatin bug via studying DNA methylation in marsupial embryonic development. In 2021 I came to the LMS to join Michelle Percharde's lab as a post-doc, to work on the fascinating question of how heterochromatin is formed in the early embryo.