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 May 6 at 09:23am

It's good that your results from this trial were similar to that from your first. Designing experiments so that they can be replicated by other researchers is very important in science. Replication demonstrates that your results weren't due…

more

It's good that your results from this trial were similar to that from your first. Designing experiments so that they can be replicated by other researchers is very important in science. Replication demonstrates that your results weren't due to some external factor or random variation.

Did poking holes in the soil make any difference? What you did is very similar to core aeration, a technique some people living on more clay-like soils use to improve aeration of their lawns: https://yardandgarden.extension.iastate.edu/how-to/core-aeration-lawns

So was it the coconut soil or the potting soil that worked the best? Your conclusion section says the potting soil, but your response below says the coconut soil. And in your first trial, you found the sandy soil to work best, right? What do you think caused the difference in results between your first and second trial?

Nice work overall!

Does Soil Matter? Bryce Askey May 1 at 10:06am

Yup, plants need to breathe! Just like animals, plants use oxygen from the air to access the energy stored in carbohydrates. This process is occurring in every part of a plant, including the roots. The green parts of a plant (leaves and stem) also…

more

Yup, plants need to breathe! Just like animals, plants use oxygen from the air to access the energy stored in carbohydrates. This process is occurring in every part of a plant, including the roots. The green parts of a plant (leaves and stem) also take up carbon dioxide to use in photosynthesis.

It will be really interesting to see if poking holes helps the plants grow at all, especially for the Mars soil where access to air seems to be a problem.

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…

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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/