Chloe Gehret

PhD Candidate, Pawpaw Patrol

“This is what I get up every day for. The getting outside, asking questions, talking to people about science. Even outside of work hours, I'm always talking about it too. It's just a part of my life at this point.”

Chloe Gehret mentors Tyson’s smallest and mightiest team: the Pawpaw Patrol. Having completed her first year (of six) in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology PhD program at WashU, Chloe now works closely alongside Principal Investigator Anna Wassel, as well as three undergraduate research fellows. The team’s aim this summer is analyze the growth of three target species (Desmodium glutinosum, Persicaria virginiana, and Ageratina altissima) in pawpaw (native tree) patches vs. non-pawpaw patches, to better understand how pawpaws influence surrounding biodiversity growth.

What problem do you wish most to solve?

“Informing people about why restoration ecology is important. Obviously not all restoration is effective and efficient. That's why it is helpful for people to know that [restoration] is a real science and that there is a lot of theory and planning that go into it. I want to democratize that understanding to all audiences, rather than making science inaccessible to [non-researcher] people who still care about these things.”

“At Tyson, we do work that relates to the natural world – the natural world that the general public encounters every day. I want to take away tangible skills to a career informing people on what we need to do to restore our natural world.”