Orneika completed her undergraduate studies at Claflin University where she received her bachelor’s degree in Biology in 2019. There her research focused on the bacterium Serratia marcescens that causes contact lens related bacterial keratitis, and how this bacterium combats the antimicrobial peptide defense of the cornea. Currently, she is a second year PhD student in the UC Berkeley Vision Science program and a member of the Fleiszig-Evans laboratory. For her current research project, she aims to understand why the healthy cornea lacks a viable microbiome- a project that spans the microbiology, neuroscience, immunology and vision science fields. Specifically, she studies the mechanism(s) employed by corneal nerves (that require the nociceptor TRPA1) to inhibit microbial colonization of the healthy cornea.