My name is Diane McCarthy, and I live in Chicago with my husband, my greyhounds,
and more plants than you can shake a trowel at.
"You are a
perfectionist. Don't spoil it."
--Fortune cookie
I am a liberal child-free
naturally curly atheist who loves baseball, chocolate, gardening,
hiking, birdwatching, dogs, architecture, photography, computer games,
and reading. I grew up in Rockford, Illinois and earned a degree in
economics and business administration from Alma College. I have a
master's degree in urban planning and policy from the University of
Illinois at Chicago, and I worked for 10 years in various government
jobs as a data analyst and modeler. Now I am in Phase 2 of my adult
life, working on a Ph.D. in biology at UIC, with an emphasis on
phylogeography and population genetics. More on that here.