Aodhan was born in Lansing, Michigan, and grew up in the greater Lansing area. After graduating high school he attended Cornell University to study Chemical Engineering. Inspired by his childhood fondness for plant science, spurred by frequent trips to Michigan State University’s botanical gardens with his grandparents, he chose to research plant natural product biosynthesis in the lab of Prof. Sijin Li. While in her lab, he used yeast as a heterologous expression host to study the biosynthesis of soybean phytoestrogens and engineer their production. Aodhan was also fortunate enough to spend a summer in Prof. Brian Bachmann’s lab at Vanderbilt through an NSF REU program where he was exposed to the biocatalysis and discovery aspects of natural products inspiring him to apply to SIO. Aodhan is looking forward to bringing his past experience to the Moore lab in studying the novel and wide-open topic of coral terpenes.