Profile

• Time Zone

  Eastern

  
  
• Organization

  Duke University

  
  
• Role

  Scientist Mentor: I will mentor teams of students online

  
  
• Research Interests (300 words)

  I study lichens, symbiotic associations of fungi and algae. My work on lichens ranges from systematics (describing new species and studying the relationships between species) to ecology (studying the factors affecting lichen diversity and abundance in a given location). Most of my current projects involve two groups of lichens, the family Graphidaceae, which is mainly tropic, and the genus Peltigera, which is cosmopolitan. I use a wide range of tools and techniques in my research, including making observations under a microscope, performing chemical analyses with chromatography, sequencing DNA, and taking measurements in the field. I have also done work on plant ecology in anthropogenic habitats such as abandoned quarries and mines.

  
  
• 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):

  Photosynthetic life has always fascinated me, and I have wanted to be a botanist for as long as I can remember. As an undergraduate, I got involved in botanical research soon after I arrived on campus and was reassured by several research experiences that I did want to pursue a scientific career. After taking a year of between college and graduate school, a year in which I worked as a field botanist in Texas, Florida, Mississippi, and Colorado, I am now starting my graduate studies. I'm pursing a Ph.D.—and, more broadly, pursuing a career in scientific research—because I have keep finding new questions about plants and fungi that I want to answer, and because I want to educate as many people as possible about the complexity and beauty of life.

  
  
• Profile Question 2

  What is a typical day like for you?

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

  Currently I spend most of my time in the lab and herbarium, and I usually try to block out my time so that each day I focus on one or the other. On a typical lab day, I extract, amplify, and sequence DNA and process DNA sequence data on my computer from morning until late afternoon. On a typical herbarium day, I start the day by gathering the specimens I want to work on, and then spend the day making morphological measurements, taking photographs, doing chemical tests, and comparing the specimens against descriptions in the published literature. Whether I am in the lab or herbarium, I devote some time at the end of the day to checking through my notebook to make sure that I recorded everything I did that day. I also usually spend a few hours in the afternoon or evening searching for published papers relevant to my research, reading those papers, and writing about my own research. Depending on how close a project is to completion, my whole day might be occupied by reading and writing.

  
  
• Profile Question 3

  Can you share a funny/interesting lab or field story?

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

  Last summer, I was on a crew mapping the vegetation of Gulf Islands National Seashore in Florida and Mississippi. One island in the park, West Ship Island, provided what might be my favorite story about interacting with the public during fieldwork. One morning in August, a National Park Service boat dropped my partner and I off at the eastern tip of the island, where we were promptly swarmed by clouds of mosquitos. Our plan was to work our way west across the island and meet up with the boat in the afternoon. For most of the day we did not see anyone else; it was just us, the plants, and some seabirds. But toward the end of the day, as we were hiking to our meeting point, we crested a dune and were suddenly on a popular beach. We looked quite out of place, standing there in our long plants and long sleeves while everyone else wore bathing suits. As we started walking along the beach, I heard a little girl calling excitedly to her father: "Daddy, look! Look!" She was pointing at us. Finally her father turned around and the girl said "Look Daddy, pirates!" I suppose that if you're seven years old and you see a tall, bearded stranger appear at the beach wearing long pants and a wide-brimmed hat, "pirate" is a good guess for their occupation. "Botanist" would be an even better guess, but I imagine that most seven year olds have never seen "Botanists of the Caribbean!"

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

  2

  
  

Recent Posts

jehsbondgrenfall2017 project 7 Ian Medeiros Dec 11, 2017

Hi Erick and Hannah—your last two messages correspond pretty well with the "methods" and "results" sections you would see in a scientific paper. The "discussion" comes next; what do the results mean?

jehsbondgrenfall2017 project 7 Ian Medeiros Nov 30, 2017

Hi Hannah,

I'm glad to see that you have a specific hypothesis to test. How are you going to measure the rate of photosynthesis (what kind of plant, how many replicates, etc.)?

 

Ian

bacsbermanfall2017 project 3 Ian Medeiros Nov 30, 2017

It's good to hear that you are doing the experiment multiple times and swapping colors between groups. That is one way to limit the effects that random variation or human error have on your results.