As a doctoral candidate in the computational bioscience program at the University of Colorado Anschutz, I am exploring the interplay of the virome, microbiome, and human host. Mechanisms such as horizontal gene transfer, evolution, and symbiotic relationships affect the genetic community composition of a niche and play a significant role in human health. To understand these mechanisms, I am developing tools to integrate viral and bacterial metagenomics from clinical samples with the explicit goal of expanding the traditional view of metagenomics studies.