Achievement

Gus Jespersen, Cohort I: A primary one is that the IGERT has exponentially increased my academic network, both inside and outside of the University of Washington. Because of the my participation in the IGERT I was able to have an international research internship at the Universidad de Chile with Dr. Mary Kalin-Arroyo, recently named by Chile’s largest newspaper as one of the ‘10 most influential foreigners in Chile.’ I will be a coauthor on at least two publications with Dr. Kalin-Arroyo and her colleagues. I was on Dr. Steve Schmidt, University of Colorado, team as he sought the world’s highest known microbial communities on, for example, the 19,850-foot-high Socompa volcano in the Andes. During my time in Chile I was also able to expand the scope of my dissertation research such that it will now include direct comparisons between plant communities in the Andes and in the Cascades, which will increase the likelihood that it lands in a top-tier journal.