Michael is a graduate student in the Doebley lab at the University of Wisconsin. He began his career in biology as an undergraduate at Indiana University, where he worked for several years in Dr. Michael Lynch’s lab. At Dr. Lynch’s lab his responsibilities were varied and included studying the effects of whole-genome-duplication on paralogs of membrane trafficking proteins in several species of Paramecium, running mutation-accumulation experiments in different species of rotifers, studying polymerase fidelity as responsible for the low mutation rate in Paramecium tetraulelia, and some computational work on polymerase diversity in prokaryotes. Michael has now started his PhD in Genetics at the University of Wisconsin and is a new research assistant in the Doebley lab.

Why I Became a Scientist

Growing up on a large family farm provided me with the unique opportunity to watch genetic experiments firsthand and on a grand scale. After several generations of dairy farming, the family decided to get out of the dairy business (conveniently just as I was turning old enough to help milk cows) and instead refocused on breeding corn and soybean hybrids for many of the major seed companies. So although I was not burdened with milking cows twice a day, I instead grew up conducting large-scale breeding experiments on what is now over 6000 acres of crop production on our Indiana farm. Growing up in such an environment naturally makes one curious about genetics, evolution, and biology in general and so I went on to study those topics at Indiana University. And although my work at Indiana University was not directly related to agriculture, I am excited to return to my roots in an agriculturally-relevant lab in graduate school.

Education

B.S. Biology, Honors – Indiana University