Natalie Whitis, is from Oskaloosa, Iowa and graduated from Iowa State with a degree in biophysics in 2017. During her time at Iowa State she studied type II CRISPR systems in Dr. Dipali Sashital’s lab, using site-directed mutagenesis to better understand how this bacterial immune system fights pathogens like bacteriophages. After graduating from Iowa State, she began her graduate work at the University of California, San Francisco in the Tetrad program. Currently, she is a PhD candidate in the lab of Dr. David Agard, where she is studying the interaction between the C. trachomatis effector IncE and the mammalian ESCPE-1 complex using single-particle cryoEM.