Michelle Pollowitz

Undergraduate Fellow

“Growing up, I used to have a garden. I really liked physically being connected with the earth, having my hands in the dirt, seeing the worms wiggling around and being able to raise plants on my own. So that's where a lot of excitement about plants for me started. Then last spring, I took Introduction to Ecology, but I had no idea what I wanted to do. We had a unit talking about diseases and their spread, and I clicked with that. I found myself grinning in classes when we were learning about the subject material. WashU also offers a class called Disease Ecology, which is taught by Dr. Penczykowski, who is my Tyson mentor. I took that class and started in her lab in the same semester. I went from like zero to a lot of disease ecology, really quickly! It's been really cool to have taken the class and learned about the subject while also applying it to the research that I was doing in the lab. And now, I am continuing that research at Tyson.”

How would you explain the research that you're doing to just someone you meet casually off the street or with a very general science knowledge?

“We have our plants, Plantago lanceolata and Plantago rugelii, that are common roadside weeds. They get infected with a pathogen called powdery mildew. Powdery mildew is spread through wind dispersal, which commonly occurs along roadways with the movement of cars. We are focusing on the urban-to-rural gradient, which evaluates how humans are interacting with the ecosystem.”

When WashU moved to remote learning for the spring semester, Michelle went back to Maryland to live with her family. She recently moved back to St. Louis for the summer. She really values being connected with people, shown best through her feelings toward the Plant Disease team she works with.

If you had to describe your research team in one object, what would it be?

“The first thing that popped into my mind was a fruit pie. Each person is definitely distinguishable, like the fruit of the pie. Everyone has their role and personality and can bring a lot of things to the table through knowledge and experience. My lab values that everyone is individually important. But we also come together and work collaboratively. You can tell the pieces are different, but overall it's cohesive. The flavor of the pie all works together. And then there is the crust, which is the research that is holding us all together.”

Michelle worked with Rachel Penczykowski’s Plant Disease team during summer 2020. Learn more about their host-pathogen coevolution research here.