Recognizing Plant Physiology first authors: Christine Scoffoni

/in , /by

Christing Scoffoni, first author of The causes of leaf hydraulic vulnerability and its influence on gas exchange in Arabidopsis thaliana

Current Position: Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, Los Angeles

Education: PhD (University of California, Los Angeles),  MS (Université Bordeaux I), BS (Université Aix-Marseille III)

Non-scientific Interests: Teaching, music, Netflix, camping and cats

Brief bio: I am French and American, married to an Argentinian, and Spanish at heart. I am a Professor at California State University Los Angeles where I aim to teach and empower diverse students and minorities into cutting-edge research. My interest in plants started during my undergraduate studies, when I took a world vegetation class and got introduced to the amazing adaptations plants exhibit to survive all kinds of environments. I obtained my PhD in 2014 at UCLA working with Dr. Lawren Sack on leaf hydraulics and evolution. As an undergraduate student, I worked with Dr. Stefan Hattenschwiler (CEFE CNRS, France) on litter decomposition in tropical forests, and Dr. Guillermo Goldstein (CONICET, Argentina) on seedling survival in the Atlantic forest. I received a Master’s Degree in Plant Functional Biology from the University of Bordeaux (France), where I got the opportunity to do a 6-month research internship at UCLA with Dr. Lawren Sack investigating the effects of light on the leaf hydraulic conductance. Prior to starting my PhD at UCLA, I volunteered for one year in Dr. Fernando Valladares’ lab (Madrid, Spain), where I conducted field ecophysiological experiments in the Alto Tajo. I love Los Angeles and its amazing cultural diversity, beaches and mountains nearby.