Flora Perlmutter

Undergraduate Fellow

Flora grew up an observant kid, taking on any experiments or projects she could and finding her own passion for the research process itself. Climate change is a big impetus for her work and one of the reasons she chose to major in environmental biology at WashU and come out to Tyson.

“For now, I’m just sort of exploring. Environmental science is such a wide field and there are so many ways you can make a contribution. So I want to find a place where I can make my own contribution.”

Some would argue that Flora has already made plenty of her own contributions, starting with her eighth grade science fair project on carbon dioxide levels. Along with an internship last summer at UC San Diego, her work at Tyson on nutrient levels in soil samples just adds to her favorite activity: research.

“I really like it — it’s what I do for fun, essentially. I have great parents who took me to national parks. I loved hiking. And I really want to make sure the beauty of nature is around as long as possible. To make it so that future generations can see how beautiful the Earth is.”

Flora worked with Scott Mangan and Claudia Stein's Natural Enemies team during summer 2019. Learn more about their plant-microbial communities research here.