I am an up-and-coming life sciences researcher interested in how plants interact with their environments, especially the soil microbiome. To date, I have a strong background in plant-microbe interactions, having studied mycorrhizae in coastal dune grasses and Ralstonia solanacearum in tomato plants.
FUNGii Lab
Since fall 2022, I have worked under Dr. Jeremiah Henning studying mycorrhizal relationships in coastal dune plants, with the end goal of helping to improve outcomes for commercial beach replenishment work. Throughout my time in this lab, I mostly worked with a master’s student, Emily Newman, helping her to mount root mycorrhizae for microscopy, analyze colonization rates in said root slides, and weighing above ground biomass from plant growth experiments with Panicum grasses. From Spring 2023 through the present, I have been running my own experiments building on her work, looking at how the presence of mycorrhizae effects salinity tolerance in Uniola Paniculata (seas oats) and two beach Ipomea (morning glory) species. I presented a poster on this research at an undergrad research symposium in Spring 2023
Tran Research Lab
Since Fall 2022, I have worked under Dr. Tuan Tran studying the effects that several remorin proteins have upon virulence in tomato plants of the bacteria Ralstonia solanacearum. Using standard microbiology techniques, I have run a series of assays infecting tomato plants with mutant strains of the widely described GMI 1000 strain of R. solanacearum. More recently, I have begun performing biofilm assays with the same strains of R. solancearum, trying to determine how well Ralstonia proliferates in tomato xylem sap. We have plans to begin assays using microfluidic devices made to closely mimic xylem vessels to determine the growth profile of R. solanacearum in conditions closely approximating those present in actual plant tissues. I presented on my research in an undergrad research symposium in Spring 2023.