Olivia Resa

Undergraduate Fellow, Plant Disease Team

Olivia Resa is exploring careers in the environmental field and Team Plant Disease’s work piqued her interest because of its applications in agriculture. 

“I don't know exactly what I want to do yet with my degree, but I am leaning more towards the agricultural sustainability route, and this summer has definitely helped solidify that decision. 

I have never learned anything about the spread of plant disease before, so that was really interesting to me and I know that that can be a very major problem, especially within agriculture. Most farmers have to use a ton of pesticides to keep away bugs and mildew. And that is obviously not great for the environment, for the water sources.” 

In addition to helping her explore her interest in agricultural sustainability, Tyson has introduced Olivia to research where she learns from compassionate and knowledgeable mentors. 

“I actually love it so much and I love all my mentors. They are there to teach you and they actually want you to learn. They are all nice and helpful, but that's literally everyone at Tyson. It is such a great community. A lot of us have not done any sort of research, so it's really great to get this experience. I like working with them on all their different projects because we do and get to see different things. It's also cool to see the different ways that they think and the different research questions which they are asking. It is good to get a diverse array of topics and research within the same sphere of plant disease.”