The Taproot Season 4

In the final episode of Season 4, we talk with Todd Barkman, Professor of Biology at Western Michigan University. Todd earned his PhD in Botany at the University of Texas at Austin with Beryl Simpson, and went on to a postdoc position at Penn State with Claude dePamphilis. He started his lab at Western…

This episode, we continue our discussions about cultivating a career with guest Kelly Gillespie, Nursery Solutions Lead at Bayer Crop Science. Kelly got her bachelor's degree at Knox College, a small liberal arts college in Illinois. She then moved on to do a PhD with Lisa Ainsworth at the University…

Our guest for this episode is Dr. Holly Bik. Holly obtained her PhD in Molecular Phylogenetics at the University of Southampton, working with John Lambshead at the Natural History Museum of London in conjunction with the UK National Oceanography Center. She completed postdoctoral appointments with Dr.…

In this episode, we talk with Laura Klasek who is a Plant Biology Ph.D. Candidate at the University of California, Davis about her research and experiences as a graduate student.  Laura received her undergraduate degree from Hendrix College, where she double-majored in Biology and English with a…

In our previous episode, we talked with Dr. Scott Barolo about his research and shared tips for completing written graduate school applications. In this episode, we go to the next step, following up with Scott to discuss what to do once you’ve made it to the interviews. Scott shares tips for…

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Scott Barolo about how he made a popular board game into a teaching tool, and we start a two-part discussion about the grad school application process. Scott gained his BSc at Penn State University and his Ph.D. in biology at the University of California, San Diego.…

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Zen Faulkes about the graduate application process, what program directors are looking for and how hard (or indeed impossible) it is to have unbiased selection system.  Zen gained a B.A., Psychology at the University of Lethbridge in 1989 and a Ph.D. at the University…

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Ambika Kamath, a behavioral ecologist and a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, about her undergraduate research and how to make value-based career decisions.  Ambika is originally from India and gained her B.A. in Biology at Amherst College in 2011. She received…