Academic Qualifications

ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS:

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Thesis: Floral Form and Ontogenetic Process in Winteraceae.
Flowers in Winteraceae show great variation in floral organ number and arrangement, in addition to differences between species and genera. I endeavored to explain floral diversity in the family through a detailed understanding of floral development, and was able to link variation in floral organ number and arrangement to the size and shape of the meristem during development. Doing so enables the separation of developmental variation from that due to lineage, and adds a new dimension to the understanding of floral development gained through the study of Arabidopsis and other model systems.

Diploma of Education, University of New England, NSW, Australia
This is a one year professional qualification needed to teach grade and senior school science, and involves lectures on the theory and practice of teaching, course-work and eight weeks practical teaching in two schools.

Bachelor of Science (1st class honors), University of Sydney, Australia.
Thesis: Evolution and Biogeography of Banksia L.f. (Proteaceae).

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:

1999-2005, Senior Postdoc (Assistant Professor, Research), University of Missouri - St Louis. Mentor: Dr Elizabeth Kellogg.
My focus over the last few years has been to integrate phylogenetic and developmental genetic viewpoints through QTL and gene expression analysis. My post-doctoral work has concentrated on understanding processes of evolutionary diversification in millet grasses (c. 300 species). I have used scanning electron microscopy to understand development and molecular phylogenetics to provide the evolutionary hypotheses against which to test patterns of developmental evolution. QTL analysis of the domestication of foxtail and pearl millet has been used to understand the genetic control of evolutionarily important characters such as branching and organ determinacy in the millet grasses. My recent work has used a comparative genomic approach to identifying candidate genes using maize developmental mutants and the rice genome. Comparative gene expression studies are helping to unravel the complex genetic basis of these quantitative traits (see Research below).

1995-1999: Teaching, (part-time) University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: anatomy, comparative morphology, systematics.

1991-1995 Research Officer, National Herbarium of NSW. Morphological and systematic research on Craspedia (Asteraceae), and Xyris (Xyridaceae).

1988-1991 Garden designer/photographer, London

1986-1988 Tutor, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia


Students mentored while at the University of Missouri-St.Louis:

Anya Vykopal, high school senior, National Science Foundation STARS summer program (Students And Teachers as Research Scientists) - won first prize for her paper on developmental differences between wild and domesticated millet grasses (2000).

Ken Hiser, masters degree on phylogeny and speciation in the genus Ixophorus (1999-2002).

Emilie Bess, masters degree on phylogeny and development of Panicum bulbosum (2001-2004).

Anya Penly, undergraduate, testing the utility of introns in the homeobox gene knotted1 for phylogenetic reconstruction in grasses (2001-2005).

Fatiha Chandler, undergraduate, using chloroplast and nuclear markers to examine phylogenetic relationships in the panicoid grasses (2002-2004).

Steve Rensfall and Brandy Pierce, undergraduates, constructing the genetic map of a cross between foxtail and green millet (2004-2005).