Julia is a graduate student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program at Harvard Medical School. She received a B.S. in marketing and a minor in integrative biology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. During undergrad, she studied the mutualism between soybeans and rhizobia (a diverse group of bacteria that fix nitrogen within the roots of soybeans and other legumes). After graduation, she worked as a research assistant studying the role that protein quality control, specifically selective autophagy, has in neurodegenerative disease. Julia is passionate about literacy, animal welfare, regenerative biology, and molecular mechanisms of repair. She enjoys reading, baking, painting, and spending time with friends in her free time.