Nelia grew up moving around with her family but spent the most time in Santiago, Chile. She graduated from Pomona College in 2024 with a B.A. in Molecular Biology. Broadly speaking, Nelia is interested in microbial ecology and evolution. At Pomona, her thesis work investigated the microbial diets of endangered Hawaiian land snails. After graduating, Nelia earned a Fulbright Scholarship to the Australian Museum in Sydney where she studied the population genetics and phylogenies of threatened land snails from Lord Howe Island. Now in the Malik Lab, Nelia has joined Team Yeast. She is working with Grant King to identify host factors that regulate the 2-micron plasmid, an evolutionarily exceptional example of extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) that has evolved with budding yeast for millions of years. Outside of the lab, Nelia enjoys cooking, climbing, and knitting (and she is currently learning to play the ukulele with other members of the Malik lab)!