Profile

• Time Zone

  Eastern

  
  
• Organization

  Syracuse University

  
  
• Role

  Scientist Mentor: I will mentor teams of students online

  
  
• Research Interests (300 words)

  My research explores how organisms interact in nature. In particular, I aim to understand how the environment affects interactions between plants and a type of fungus that lives inside plant roots. I am especially interested in how changes in the environment, such as rising temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations, will affect these interactions, and how these plant-fungal interactions influence where different species live.

  
  
• Profile Question 1

  What is the coolest thing you have discovered or learned about plants?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 1 here (300 words):

  One of the coolest things I have learned about plants is that they play host to an amazing diversity of bacteria and fungi. In fact, there can be hundreds of different microbes living inside a single plant! Some of these microbes help plants survive and grow, while others are diseases, but in many cases, the identity and the function of these microbes is still a mystery!

  
  
• Profile Question 2

  What is best about being a scientist?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 2 here (300 words):

  My favorite thing about being a scientist is that no two days are exactly the same because every day I learn something new!

  
  
• Profile Question 3

  What is tough about being a scientist?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 3 here (300 words):

  My favorite thing about being a scientist is also what (I think) makes it tough. As a scientist, my job is to ask questions about plants and design experiments to test these questions. I can make predictions about what I think will happen in my experiments, but there is often no "right" answer that explains everything. In fact, I often learn more when the results don't match my predictions. Thus, in order to understand how plants function I have to conduct many experiments, each one adding a small piece to the bigger puzzle.

  
  
• Availability

  I am currently available for mentoring, please send me team match invitations

  
  
• Capacity: How many teams at a time are you comfortable working with?

  2

  
  

Recent Posts

mhsmirandafall2022 project 9 Katie M. Becklin Nov 28, 2022

Hi team!

Thank you for sharing your project summary with me. I know you were a little disappointed that your plants didn't grow in some of the treatments. However, that result still tells you something about how plants grow. Sometimes we…

more

Hi team!

Thank you for sharing your project summary with me. I know you were a little disappointed that your plants didn't grow in some of the treatments. However, that result still tells you something about how plants grow. Sometimes we learn just as much or more from experiments that "fail" as we do from experiments that work exactly how we predicted. Hopefully, you continue to ask questions and conduct experiments to learn about plants!

Cheers, Katie

The Three Sprouts Katie M. Becklin Nov 17, 2022

Hi team!

It looks like you did a great job summarizing your experiment on your storyboard. Poster presentations like that one are a common way that scientists share their results with other people. In fact, three students in my lab presented…

more

Hi team!

It looks like you did a great job summarizing your experiment on your storyboard. Poster presentations like that one are a common way that scientists share their results with other people. In fact, three students in my lab presented posters at conferences this summer. It looks like you are already developing the skills to be excellent scientists! Congratulations on an successful experiment!

I enjoyed working with all of you and I hope that you continue to learn about the amazing world of plants.

Cheers, Katie

The Three Sprouts Katie M. Becklin Nov 14, 2022

Also, as you wrap things up I encourage you to keep the following questions in mind...

1. Did your results support your hypothesis? Was there anything surprising about your results?
2. Based on your experiment, what recommendations would you give…

more

Also, as you wrap things up I encourage you to keep the following questions in mind...

1. Did your results support your hypothesis? Was there anything surprising about your results?
2. Based on your experiment, what recommendations would you give to someone who wanted to grow this plant species in their garden?
3. If you could go back and do this experiment again, what would you do differently? Are there other questions you would want to test?

Cheers, Katie