Amanda began working in Scharf lab as an undergraduate in 2014 and worked on the cellular stoichiometry project for the beneficial soil microbe, Sinorhizobium meliloti. She helped establish bacterial two-hybrid protocols to test protein-protein interactions in S. meliloti’s chemotaxis signal transduction pathway. She graduated from Virginia Tech with a B.S. in microbiology in 2018. She received her M.S. in veterinary medical sciences from the University of Florida in 2021 where she worked to create a reverse genetics system for Jeremy Point virus, a nyavirus isolated from common eider ducks in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In 2022 she returned to Scharf lab with Virginia Tech’s Biological Sciences Ph.D. program. Currently she studies Chi-like flagellotropic bacteriophages in the Siphoviridae family.
Outside of lab, Amanda enjoys horror movies, attempting arts and crafts, and hanging out with her menagerie of pets.