Profile

• Time Zone

  Eastern

  
  
• Organization

  University of Connecticut

  
  
• Role

  Scientist Mentor: I will mentor teams of students online

  
  
• Research Interests (300 words)

  Understanding ecological and evolutionary mechanisms structuring patterns of plant biodiversity, especially in diverse ecosystems such as the tropics and the Cape Floristic Region in South Africa.

  
  
• Profile Question 1

  What is best about being a scientist?

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

  Being able to wake up every day, knowing that your job is to ask interesting questions about the world, and try to figure out how to best answer them, and then getting to share your discoveries with others.

  
  
• Profile Question 2

  When and why did you decide to go into a science career?

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

  I decided to follow a career in science after spending 10 weeks working in a diverse tropical rainforest in Costa Rica while an undergraduate. I fell in love with plants, ecology, and became obsessed with trying to figure out where so many species came from, how they managed to co-exist, and why places differed so much with respect to the number of species they harbored. It was during this trip that I also met with graduate students, and learned about PhD programs in ecology and evolutionary biology. I was so excited to learn that I could pursue research as a career.

  
  
• Profile Question 3

  What is tough about being a scientist?

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

  Very early on, you learn that your experiments and studies rarely go to plan. Often, the experiment or study completely fails, or the results you get don't make any sense with respect to your original expectations. This can be disheartening, and frustrating at times, especially when you are very keen to learn the answer to your question, but also can present new opportunities. A lot about science, and doing research, is being able to respond to this situations, and learn from them. When you have that in mind, it can actually be quite fun and exciting to challenge yourself to pursue different avenues of answering your question, or even recognizing that the results from your "failed" study presented new questions to follow.

  
  
• Help represent the outreach efforts of your societies. Please click all those organizations you are a member of:

  (not set)

  
  
• Availability

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

  
  
• In addition to English, I am comfortable communicating with students in the following languages:

  (not set)

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

  2