Profile

• Time Zone

  Eastern

  
  
• Organization

  Cornell University

  
  
• Role

  Scientist Mentor: I will mentor teams of students online

  
  
• Research Interests (300 words)

  I study photosynthesis - the process which plants use to convert the light energy of the sun into the chemical energy of sugars. Photosynthesis is an incredible feat of biological ingenuity that nearly every organism on Earth relies on. As cool as photosynthesis is, it’s not perfect. And one step is particularly inefficient – carbon fixation.
  
  Carbon is a fundamental building block of life. Earth’s atmosphere contains an abundance of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide. However, carbon in this gaseous form is only usable by organisms that can “fix” it, or convert it from a gas into sugars. In photosynthetic organisms, carbon fixation is performed by an enzyme named Rubisco.
  
  Rubisco has an important, but tough job! It needs to use carbon dioxide to fix carbon. Unfortunately, carbon dioxide looks a lot like another common gas – oxygen. If Rubisco mistakenly uses oxygen, no carbon fixation occurs, and the plant has to spend energy to undo this mix-up.
  
  I study Rubisco to 1) reduce the number of mistakes it makes, and 2) increase its speed. To do this, I take inspiration from green algae, the aquatic relatives of land plants. Overall, I hope to improve Rubisco and photosynthesis in the plants which we depend on for food.

  
  
• 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):

  About half all photosynthesis on Earth occurs in the ocean! (phytoplankton are plants too!)

  
  
• Profile Question 2

  Do you have advice for students about preparing for a science career?

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

  Be prepared for everything to go wrong. But when things do go wrong (or at least not in the way you expected them to), do your best to understand why!

  
  
• Profile Question 3

  Can you describe your attitude toward science when you were in high school?

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

  I was pretty convinced I wanted to be an engineer in high school, so I only took one semester of basic biology. My attitude towards science was indifference. In college, I realized that at their core, science and engineering are a lot more similar than I originally thought. Specifically, good critical thinking and problem solving skills are absolutely vital in both.

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

  2

  
  

Recent Posts

Does Soil Matter? Bryce Askey Apr 24 at 05:37pm

Based on your description, I would guess that the Mars soil was too compacted for the roots to grow into, or didn't drain water well enough to allow the roots to breathe.

In class, have you learned about the different components of soil? When…

more

Based on your description, I would guess that the Mars soil was too compacted for the roots to grow into, or didn't drain water well enough to allow the roots to breathe.

In class, have you learned about the different components of soil? When you're reporting the results of your experiments, it may be helpful to know where each one falls on the soil texture triangle. Testing soil composition is actually pretty easy: https://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheet/soil-texture-analysis-the-jar-test/

Does Soil Matter? Bryce Askey Apr 18 at 02:25pm

If the Mars soil has a high percentage of clay, then yeah, I agree that it would have made it difficult for plants to grow. So the seeds in the Mars soil didn't grow, but do you know if they germinated at all? I have no clue how small seeds of…

more

If the Mars soil has a high percentage of clay, then yeah, I agree that it would have made it difficult for plants to grow. So the seeds in the Mars soil didn't grow, but do you know if they germinated at all? I have no clue how small seeds of Wisconsin Fast are, but you could check if they formed a radicle (first root) and then stopped growing, or if they didn't grow at all. This might give you clues into why exactly the Mars soil isn't good for plant growth.

Measuring growth of all the seeds sounds like a good plan. I'm excited to hear about the results of this new round of experiments.

Does Soil Matter? Bryce Askey Apr 12 at 08:26pm

Interesting! So sandy soil had the most seeds germinate and the plants grew the tallest? Why do you think that no seeds germinated in the Mars soil?