[Kristen Van Gelder]

I had the opportunity to be a graduate student representative on a faculty hiring committee. One part of the application for prospective hires, was including an EDI statement. Around this time, a thorough review was conducted university wide to determine the gender pay gap and fix it and our new president was, for the first time, a woman. I felt real progress was being made and I was proud that my university was taking steps to move forward and be more diverse and inclusive. It seemed like real progress was taking shaping in a university that at it’s beginning had separate colleges for men and women. Yet during this time, protests were taking place across the US and the world for Black Lives Matter. And it made us all realize in our department and throughout the university that while we had made some good progress in EDI, it wasn’t fully inclusive, and we were still lacking. I am happy about the progress we’ve made but I also know that we all need to speak up more, not just for our own minority groups that we fall into, but for every group.

[Kristen Van Gelder]

Hello everyone! My name is Kristen Van Gelder, and I am a PostDoc at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. My research area is in synthetic biology with a focus on “plantizing” microbial enzymes through continuous directed evolution. I am currently working on evolving enzymes of thiamin biosynthesis. During my graduate studies at the University of Guelph, Canada, I studied plant specialized metabolism, with an emphasis on isoprenoid biosynthesis in tomato. I have also studied specialized metabolism in Cannabis sativa and Mitragyna speciosa.

I look forward to sharing and discussing plant science with everyone in the Plantae community!