I’m Mauna.

I am a microbial ecologist interested in the complex evolutionary and ecological relationships between hosts and their microbiomes. I investigate how the microbiomes in a host’s gut change in response to the host’s environment, as well as how these changes in the gut microbiome impact the host’s growth and development.

During my PhD at the University of Notre Dame with Dr. Beth Archie, I demonstrated that the gut microbiome exhibits predictable changes with age, and that these changes were predictive of important host developmental events using longitudinal data from the Amboseli Baboon Research Project. In January 2022, I started as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in Biology at the University of Pittsburgh, where I work with Dr. Kevin Kohl’s lab to investigate how different species living together might change tadpole gut microbiomes such that they are buffered against the effects of environmental stressors. For more information, please visit my research tab.

I strive to integrate my research with my skills in scientific outreach and communication to engage broad audiences and jointly advance science and accessibility. I am committed to communicating my science to broad audiences, uplifting historically excluded communities, and dismantling systemic barriers through my scientific outreach and communication, leadership, and activism. Please see my community engagement page for more information.