My name is Taylor Ferebee and I am currently a Computational Biology Ph.D. Student at Cornell University under the supervision of Dr. Edward Buckler. I currently hold a USDA NIFA-AFRI  predoctoral fellowship for my work.  I am fascinated by the use of mathematical language to understand the immensely complex systems that govern gene expression across plants. My Ph.D. thesis focuses on learning representations of regulatory elements for cross-species modeling of gene activity. In my work, I borrow heavily from topics in graph neural networks, representation learning, bioinformatics, and interpretable machine learning. My other passions include trivia, Clemson football, podcasts, and the advancement of Black women in computational biology and applied mathematics.