After growing up in northern Illinois, I attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I obtained a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering with a focus in Polymers and a minor in Chemistry in 2007.  To pursue my interest in polymers further, I continued my studies as a LORD Fellow at The University of Akron in the Department of Polymer Science with Prof. Ali Dhinojwala.  My doctoral research focused on understanding exciton dissociation and geminate recombination in organic photovoltaics through computational modeling of transient absorption spectroscopy experiments.  After finishing my PhD in 2012, I moved to Würzburg, Germany for my first postdoctoral position.  Working with experimental physicists Prof. Vladimir Dyakonov at the University of Würzburg and Prof. Carsten Deibel at Chemnitz University of Technology, I combined experimental and computational techniques to understand charge carrier recombination processes in organic semiconductor blends and started new research in the emerging field of perovskite photovoltaics.  In 2015, I moved back to the USA for my second postdoctoral position with Prof. Thuc-Quyen Nguyen at the Center for Polymers and Organic Solids at UCSB to continue my research in the field of organic semiconductors.