Shirley joined the LEAPH lab in Spring 2025. She is a freshman at Virginia Tech in 2024 majoring in Biological Science and intends to transfer to the CMDB (Computational Modeling and Data Analyzing Biology option) major. She takes keen interest in bacterial resistance, genomics, and using computational methods to analyze biological data. In LEAPH, she works on a project studying contamination sources of Listeria on indoor plants.

In her leisure time, Shirley enjoys cooking, traveling, and volunteering at animal shelters.