Profile

• Time Zone

  Eastern

  
  
• Organization

  Columbia University

  
  
• Role

  Scientist Mentor: I will mentor teams of students online

  
  
• Research Interests (300 words)

  I am a 4th year PhD candidate interested in how plants interact with one another in their natural environments. I study two types of plant interactions. The first is plant parasitism: the plants I work with are parasites, which means they physically attach to the roots of other plants that they live next to and steal resources (like water and nutrients). I want to know which genes help my plants parasitize other plants. The second type of interaction I study are pollination interactions. I want to know what happens when a flower is pollinated by pollen from a different (or the wrong) species. I run field and lab experiments to investigate the consequences of being pollinated with foreign pollen.

  
  
• Profile Question 1

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

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

  I had a special interest for Biology starting in high school, but I didn't know that I wanted to be a botanist until my second year of college. I had the privilege of participating in a field course, which meant that I learned how to do fieldwork. I learned all about plant identification and studied plant diversity in a tropical forest. That experience showed me that I could spend my life outdoors, answering questions about why the natural world is the way that it is. That was super exciting!

  
  
• Profile Question 2

  What is a typical day like for you?

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

  One of the best parts about working in science is that each day can look very different. When I'm in the field, my days are filled with hiking and collecting flowers. Even when I'm not in the field, my days can be very different depending on what experiment I'm working on at the moment. Right now, I am doing a special type of microscopy that requires dye. I start each day at the lab bench. I take out flowers that I collected during fieldwork and choose which ones I'm going to work with. I put the flowers through a series of washes (with water) and softening steps (with other chemicals). At the end, I put the flowers in blue dye. The dye binds to a specific part of the flower that I'm interested in. Once dyed, I take the flowers to a huge microscope that has a laser. The laser passes through the floral tissue and causes the dye to light up turquoise, so I can easily see what I'm interested in! I do take lunch breaks to joke around with my labmates.

  
  
• Profile Question 3

  What is best about being a scientist?

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

  The best part about being a scientist is getting to use creativity! Many people think that science is the direct opposite of creative fields like art or writing, but I've found that creative thinking is necessary for designing interesting and new experiments. Sometimes, scientist have to build new tools or use unexpected items to run their experiments. I once read a study where a team of scientist used a handheld vacuum to collect ants in a tropical rainforest! Designing an experiment that answers your specific questions is itself an art, and is a lot of fun!

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

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