Chapter the Second:
Education
I am a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in
the Ecology and Evolution program of the biology department. I spend my
days taking my last few classes, helping to teach undergraduate biology
students, and reading up on the latest in molecular and spatial
analysis methods. For my project, I collect leaf samples of my study
species in the field and then take them back to the lab and sequence
portions of their DNA. Variations in that DNA will (hopefully!) tell me
something interesting about the history and origin of each population,
which can then give me insights into how communities form and change
over time, and how they respond to events like fragmentation and
climate warming.