Casandra is a former PhD student in the NIMML, studying Genomics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology with a B.S. in Animal and Poultry Sciences at Virginia Tech. Systems analyst with experience leading and working in teams in collaboration with various government, technological, and military agencies such as DTRA/DOD analyzing data and systems to determine solutions to real world problems. Her long-term research interest is to develop capabilities that support human health from the personalized to global scale. Her research portfolio is focused on elucidating human-microbe interactions, and exploiting those interactions to improve detection, diagnostic, bio-surveillance, and therapeutic devices.