Space Farmer
I'm a space farmer.
I have a PhD in Botany.
As part of my PhD I did fundamental research with growing plants in space. The plants that I sowed on Earth on hydrogel were grown on the Space Shuttle, got them back, then I spent the better part of a decade diving into the genetic and physiological differences between the plants grown on Earth and in Space.
At the end of my PhD I was selected for an internship with the Space Crop Production team at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. I loved applying my fundamental knowledge gained in my PhD to crop plants.
I spent the next couple of years with my family while submitting a seemingly endless stream of applications to various postdoctoral programs and fellowships that would allow me to continue my work. Eventually one stuck. I found myself back with the dream team at KSC. I spent 3 years there as a postdoc, working on microgreens as a potential crop for space.
Immediately upon completion of my postdoctoral program I was picked up as a contractor for the archives at NASA Ames. Now I spend my days making plant space research public with the Open Science Data Repository.
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