PhD Dissertation: In Progress

Understanding the complex relationship between plants and fungi in symbiotic relationships and how this system responds to different environmental stressors. Specifically, I am interested in how metabolomic, elemental, and spectral profiles change during various stress events such as drought, disease, heavy metal contamination, etc. for use as a biomonitoring tool. The goal of my research is to understand the plant-fungal system as a potential chemical sensor to better detect and classify stressors within different ecosystems.