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Research Interests The focus of my graduate studies is 3-manifold topology with an emphasis on Heegaard splittings. A Heegaard splitting is a method of decomposing a 3-manifold into two simpler pieces. All 3-manifolds admit a Heegaard splitting and these splittings can provide information about the topology of the original 3-manifold. One such property of a Heegaard splitting is its "distance," which roughly measures the complexity of the Heegaard splitting. My dissertation focuses on the relationship between the gluing map between two handlebodies and the resulting distance of the Heegaard splitting. In particular, I showed how distance is affected when using Dehn twists (a twist of the surface about a curve) as the gluing map. You can check out slides from my recent talk at the Joint Mathematics Meetings here for more information (and pictures!). Papers High Distance Bridge Surfaces (with Ryan Blair and Maggy Tomova) Algebraic & Geometric Topology 13 (2013), 2925-2946 Classification of Topological Symmetry Groups of $K_n$ (with Erica Flapan, Blake Mellor, and Ramin Naimi) Topological Proceedings 43 (2014), 209-233 High Distance Heegaard Splittings via Dehn Twists To appear in Algebraic & Geometric Topology