Ella is a junior at William & Mary, majoring in Biology and minoring in Chemistry. In the Maurer-Alcala lab, she focuses on the extent to which prokaryotic Lateral Gene Transfer (LGT) events have impacted dinoflagellate stress responses through both single-cell sequencing and phylogenetic approaches. She’s also part of the team looking at by-catch in public transcriptome datasets. Outside of lab, Ella stage manages student theatre productions, writes for The Flat Hat, and works as a Research Ambassador for the Charles Center. She is an avid fan of pumpkin-flavored-anything and cringe-worthy dad jokes, and hopes to pursue a PhD in microbiology and study molecular mechanisms in bacteria.