Super excited to see this work, which encompasses the first chapter of my dissertation, published in npj Soil Ecology! The goal of this paper was to assess how anthropogenic nitrogen deposition alters organic matter biochemsitry across decomposition and what microbial decomposers are associated with those changes.
Check it out here, open access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44485-026-00003-0
This month marked an incredibly special end to my time as a Ph.D. student.
On May 5th, 2026 I successfully defended my Ph.D. in Soil Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The day was everything I had hoped it would be and more. I am so grateful to have been surrounded (both near and far) by the most wonderful mentors, mentees, colleagues, and friends who shaped this journey. I'm immensely proud of the science that came from these years, but even more grateful for the people I had the privilege of doing it with.
Days before defending, I was awarded the Graduate Student Leadership Award by the UW-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, one of three graduate awardees across the university, after being nominated by my peers. Days after defending, I attended the 2026 Soil Ecology Society Biennial Meeting in New Jersey where I accepted an award for the 2026 Best Student Authored Paper for our 2024 Propson et al. Ecology paper. While there, I gave a talk that was later awarded second place in the student oral competition that distilled 5 years' worth of work into 12 fast-paced minutes. Two weeks later, I traveled to Umeå, Sweden, to attend my first international conference and give a talk at the 12th International BIOGEOMON Conference. It was so lovely to connect and talk science and life with so many friends, collaborators, and colleagues.
This time in my life has truly been so full of love, light, and joy, and I am so deeply grateful for the communities, collaborators, and forest soils that made my Ph.D. experience so meaningful.
In August, I'll be moving to New Haven, CT, to start my postdoctoral fellowship at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station working with Dr. Elisabeth Ward and Dr. Itamar Shabtai studying belowground impacts of beech leaf disease spread across New England forests.
I received the Department of Soil and Environmental Sciences Jaya Iyer Award* for best graduate student seminar for the 2024-2025 academic year for my departmental seminar titled "The biogeochemistry of carbon at the University of Michigan Biological Station: A story of forest carbon through time."
By comparing trends in above- and below-ground carbon cycling across long-term temperate forest research stations, this talk highlights the importance of long-term ecological research for holistic understanding of ecosystem functioning and discusses the fate and future trajectories of long-term ecological research in order to sustain and preserve LTERs amid U.S. federal funding cuts.
*In the Department of Soil and Environmental Sciences, graduate students are required to give a research seminar that is not about their Ph.D. or M.S. research and the Jaya Iyer award is awarded annually to the best graduate student seminar of the academic year, as decided by members of the department.