I am a PhD candidate at the University of Alabama in Huntsville working under the mentorship of Dr. Sara Cooper at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. My research is focused on using genomic approaches for the diagnosis and treatment of a diverse range of diseases from hereditary cancer to neurodegenerative disease. Genome sequencing offers the opportunity to explore human variation in noncoding regions that may impact splicing or gene regulation. It also expands the scope of the search for causative variation by considering genes not previously thought to cause the observed phenotypes. In my current work I am using the analysis of genomic sequencing data to identify novel variants or combinations of variants contributing to dementia risk by considering high impact rare variants and common risk variants. I am pursuing a career as a clinical lab director and hope to use my interest and expertise in variant annotation to accelerate the delivery of genome sequencing and other genetic information to patients.