Rechel grew up in Memphis, TN, and thought she would be a professional flutist until taking a life-changing biology class her senior year of high school. She attended Duke University, where she received a B.S. in Chemistry, with a focus in Chemical Biology, and minors in Global Health and Biology. While at Duke, Rechel combined her love for infectious diseases and chemistry to study small molecule inhibitors of the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium in the lab of Emily Derbyshire.

After graduating, Rechel wanted to expand her work in infectious diseases to study the interface of human-pathogen interactions. She worked as a technician in the lab of Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, where she explored the mechanisms of innate immunity and inflammation in bone disease and bacterial infection.

Since joining the University of Washington MSTP, Rechel has continued doing host-pathogen interaction research, both in Alexis Kaushansky’s lab for a summer research rotation and now in the Malik lab, under joint mentorship by Harmit Malik and Michael Emerman. For her thesis work, she is studying the evolutionary landscape of the innate immune protein MxA in the face of challenge by human pathogenic and zoonotic viruses.

Outside the lab, Rechel loves to sleep in, listen to Ariana Grande (she's a top 0.1% fan on Spotify), and spend time in the great outdoors with friends both human and canine.