Alyssa is currently a postdoc at UW-Madison in Bacteriology. They got their PhD in Physics at Arizona State University, where they studied the difference between living systems and non-living ones. During that time, they were involved in Sundial, which is a program that directly addressed the low retention rates of underrepresented students in Physics by actively creating a culture of fun social events and peer mentoring. Alyssa also did an internship at Microsoft Research, where they implemented one-shot machine learners directly into Minecraft. For two years after graduation, Alyssa worked at VEDA Data Solutions, a local data-science-as-a-service company focused on making messy healthcare data accurate. Now, Alyssa develops fast and improved software for bioinformatics while studying how complex systems (like microbiomes) work together to perform robust functions.