My work seeks to identify strategies farmers can implement to support belowground biodiversity and ecosystem functions, addressing both fundamental and applied aspects of soil ecology. Below are some of the areas of research I am interested in.

Climate-smart and regenerative management practices in agroecosystems: I am interested in collaborating with farmers to investigate how climate-smart and regenerative management practices can support soils, enhance resource use efficiency, and maintain crop productivity. As an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in Biology, I am currently working with the Long-Term Agroecosystem Research Trial at the Kellogg Biological Station at Michigan State University to investigate the impact of stacked regenerative practices on the soil microbiome, soil phosphorus cycling, and crop productivity.

Sustainable soil management strategies for urban agriculture: Urban agriculture can offer a number of public health, social, economic, and ecological benefits to communities across the globe. However, one of the largest challenges urban growers must contend with is building and maintaining healthy soils in the urban environment. As a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow, I am collaborating with urban growers in Oakland and San Francisco to test how publicly-available organic amendments such as municipal compost can support soil health and crop productivity in urban agriculture. We are also collaborating on a number of urban grower outreach and extension projects to better support urban agriculture practitioners in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Root and rhizosphere interactions for enhanced crop fitness: Microbial consortia in the rhizosphere have a tremendous influence on their plant hosts and can modulate several plant traits. Using experimental microbiome systems, I am interested in studying growth-promoting microbial communities in the rhizosphere and how they can enhance aspects of crop fitness such as nutrient use efficiency and productivity.