Profile

• Time Zone

  Eastern

  
  
• Organization

  University of Kansas

  
  
• 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

  
  

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