Ivan Ginsberg

Undergraduate Fellow

You said that you wanted to protect nature. Do you feel that a research job accomplishes that?

“Learning about the world and being able to share what you learn, and hopefully make people think the whole thing is as amazing as you do, is a big part of conservation.

I grew up in New York City. I was in Central Park almost every day. Even though growing up in the city I saw mostly sidewalk, I still managed to get a pretty strong love for trees. My friends walk past a tree and they're like, ‘Oh that's a tree.’ And I'm like, ‘Oh, it's a tree!’ It's important in research that you have a better understanding of the tree because you actually are looking at the mechanisms and at the networks and seeing what's going on, trying to figure out what's going on, understanding it. It's as amazing and as complex as anything human or computer-wise.”

Ivan worked with Scott Mangan and Claudia Stein's Natural Enemies team during summer 2018. Learn more about their plant-microbial communities research here.