My first time giving a talk on my birthday & my first time sharing my blusky link in a presentation!

I'm so glad someone had the foresight to take a photo of me while I was working as the student Herbarium Curator of my high school. Really helps tell the story of how I got where I am today!

This work was funded by a COVID-19 delayed grant from National Geographic written with Makenzie Mabry & our PhD advisor @jchrispires.bsky.social. Even though we all scattered to the wind following the pandemic, following up on such exciting work has been great! #TeamBrassica

The plants we found were often connected to human habitation. They appeared as weeds in gardens, like Zilla spinosa, or as volunteers in farmers’ fields, where the centuries-old practice of community-coordinated groundwater extraction from oases sustains them and their cousin Brassica oleraceae.

To observe this otherwise hidden photosynthetic phenotype, we brought a Licor 6400 to the desert to measure photosynthetic efficiency. Unfortunately, due to an earlier drought, many plants had already activated their avoidance strategies, so we missed the opportunity to observe and measure them.

Some utilize avoidance strategies, like those that go dormant or completely disappear from the landscape, relying on a resilient seed bed to avoid the harshest conditions. Others have evolved a photosynthetic tolerance strategy hidden from the naked eye, allowing them to persist.

When people think of the Sahara, they rarely consider the plants or realize how close a thorny desert shrub is to their favorite leafy greens. My field partner, Makenzie Mabry, and I traveled to Morocco with Abderrahim Ouarghidi to uncover the secrets of these desert-adapted Brassiceae species.

Hi new folks! I'm Shawn. My research utilizes a combination of systems biology, systematics, and comparative genomics to understand trait evolution in plants. My current work took me to the northern Sahara in search of desert-adapted wild relatives of Brassica crops (🥦🧪). Here's how it went:

Quote this with who you would be in Star Trek

“I know he’s not everyone’s favorite guy right now” is an interesting way to say he was a eugenicist. Can’t wait for the comeback…

The template: