Current research in plant science
Since Fall 2021, I have been pursuing a PhD in Biology with a focus on plant science at Saint Louis University and the Danforth Plant Science Center. I am working in Allison Miller's lab focused on perennial plant diversity. The topic of my dissertation will be developmental, environmental, and genetic influences on resource allocation in perennial sunflower species.
In 2021, I completed my Master's of Science in Botany at Miami University of Ohio. I worked in Rob Baker's lab that focused on plant evolutionary developmental biology. My thesis had two main parts. For the first part, I investigated the genetic architecture underlying resource allocation in Brassica rapa as a result of salt stress. For the second part, I developed and validated a low-cost, high-throughput plant phenotyping system for automatically quantifying foliar area and greenness.