I'm a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley, working under Ph.D. Britt Koskella in the Integrative Biology department. My research broadly encompasses community ecology, microbiology, and conservation biology among a bunch of other disciplines that intersect with my projects. I'm specifically looking at microbial communities (microbiomes) in plants, how these communities are assembled over time, how they affect plant health, and how we can harness microbiomes for application in sustainable agriculture and conservation of threatened plants. My dissertation is centered around the seed microbiome and how microbes can affect plants throughout generations via maternal investment (resource partitioning), transfer of microbes from mother to offspring (vertical transmission), and genetic priming (epigenetics). As a Kanaka ʻŌwi, I am also interested in increasing accessibility to education and research for Hawaiians.
B.Sc. in Biology at the University of Puget Sound M.S. in Botany at the University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa. |