Shannon received her doctoral degree from the University of Connecticut where she studied networks of gene transfer in microbial populations to gain insights as to the functional and evolutionary relationships within the community. She continued to study microbial population dynamics in her postdoctoral work, shifting to focus on the “domestication” of a virus and its host bacterium. She expanded this work to start her own lab at River Valley Community College as part of the NH-INBRE program. She has a strong foundation of knowledge regarding microbial ecology, evolution, and functional networks in microbial communities, with a special interest in highly mobile genes (the mobilome). Shannon has worked extensively with comparative genomics, taxonomic data, metagenomic data, and phylogenetic data. She also has a special interest in education and has been teaching beginners to program for many years. Outside of science, she enjoys hiking, gardening, cooking and spending time with her family.