Pepper graduated from California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB) in 2023 with a Bachelor of Science in molecular biology. During her undergraduate career she won several research awards, including a second-place award at the 37th Annual California State University Student Research Competition, with students from all 23 CSU campuses competing, for her research on horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance genes.
Currently, Pepper is a part of the ClinGen affiliated UNC Biocuration and Coordination Core and is also working on a project focused on Wolbachia, an intracellular bacteria that infects the reproductive organs of Arthropoda, in the Sullivan Lab at University of California, Santa Cruz.
Pepper hopes to pursue a career in the vast field of genetics research and has ambitions to attend graduate school to obtain a PhD in genomics in the near future.
