People

I am interested in exploring how things work in nature. Starting off counting phytoplanktons collected from urban wetlands and figuring out how eutrophication affects freshwater life, I became fascinated by the tiny but mighty microorganisms in the soil, one of the most heterogeneous habitats on earth. Who are there? What can they do? How do they interact? How do their functions affect human-relevant soil processes in the ever-changing environment? These are my ongoing quests.

I seek to understand how microbial communities function and assemble. Specifically, I utilize a range of microbiological, genomic and bioinformatic techniques to query the biogeography and diversity of microbes and their functional genes across earth. Hopefully, my work will provide insight into how microbes can impact humans from a health perspective, both in terms of discovering novel specialized metabolites (as a graduate student) and mapping pathogen risk (as a postdoctoral researcher).

After completing my PhD in Soil Science—where I investigated how microbial communities respond to pyrogenic organic matter in fire-affected soils—I began a postdoctoral research position focused on bacterial–fungal interactions in grassland soils. Building on my background in stable isotope techniques, I combine 13C labeling, flux measurements, and quantitative stable isotope probing to study the fate of plant-derived carbon and the underlying mechanisms that drive soil carbon turnover. My work merges field experiments, molecular analyses, and data analytics to deepen our understanding of how microbial communities respond to environmental change and influence soil carbon dynamics.

I’m fascinated by microbial connections among soil, plant, and human health, which are much closer than previously thought. This curiosity drives my current research on Legionella in tropical agriculture. During my master’s studies, I assessed soil quality using physical, chemical, and microbial indicators to support food production. I later focused on plant-soil-microbe interactions as a research assistant, asking “how much” and “what kinds” of carbon compounds are stored in soils, and “who” processes and stabilizes them.

Before joining the Yuan Lab, I worked as a lab technician and became fascinated by using stable isotope techniques to study plant-microbe interactions. Having contributed to several projects using these methods, I hope to build on this foundation in graduate school. My research focuses on how the plant rhizosphere forms and develops over time under varying conditions. Specifically, I want to understand if and how plants use root exudates to recruit and select microbes that provide ecosystem services. I am also interested in how root exudates and the associated microbial communities shift in response to environmental changes. To explore these questions, I plan to conduct stable isotope experiments to link microbial communities with host plants, identify root exudates, and track their changes throughout plant development and under stress conditions such as drought and extreme heat.

I am an undergraduate Biology student at UH Manoa, with intentions to enroll in medical school afterwards. I was given the privilege to work as a research assistant in the SMiL lab and explore the importance of microbiology, as well as its relevance to public health through Legionella research that I am currently conducting alongside Maggie and Hans. I hope to understand and uncover effective methods of culturing and observing Legionella in various environmental conditions to further future research. 

I am an undergraduate student studying for a BA in Marine Biology from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. I aim to gain more lab experience through helping to characterize Legionella in soils and freshwater as I continue to explore career options. 

“A nation that destroys its soil destroys itself” – Franklin D. Roosevelt. Like FDR, I believe that soils are important for the multitude of ecosystem services they provide to the world, such as food, biodiversity, and carbon storage. My research centers upon the use of ¹³C as ¹³CO₂ to study belowground soil interactions among plants, soil, and different climatic events, and also use it, to an extent, as a ground truthing tool for any emerging biotechnology aimed at increasing soil C sequestration in the soil.