Hello! My name is Sam and I am a current PhD student at UT Austin, joining the Kemp Lab in 2024. I was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada and love hiking, rockhounding and sightseeing in my hometown. I completed my undergraduate degree in Geology and Anthropology at the University of Florida and worked for the Florida Museum of Natural History as a fieldwork supervisor, research assistant, collections assistant, and permit coordinator for the Divisions of Vertebrate, and Invertebrate Paleontology over the course of three years. My undergraduate work consisted of Oligocene fossil salamanders, fossilized shark rostral cartilage, combining paleontology with machine learning, and strontium isotopic analyses. My research in the Kemp Lab focuses on fossil salamander community diversity and morphological changes in relation to past climatic events. I also love continuing to learn about machine learning and plan to find new ways of integrating AI with paleontology. In addition to research, I am very passionate about outreach and currently organize the natural history table for the monthly, grad student-led program "Science Under the Stars". In my free time, I love to take nature walks, have picnics and enjoy all things crafty!