Affiliation: Harvard University, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Emily Rivard is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University. She received her A.B. in Biology at the College of the Holy Cross, where she studied the functional significance of newly evolved genes in Drosophila spermatogenesis with Dr. Geoffrey Findlay. She is currently in the lab of Dr. Cassandra Extavour, studying the evolution of germ line genes in insects. Her dissertation project interrogates the functional evolution of oskar, a gene required for germ cell specification and/or neurogenesis in different insect species.