Pam
Laureto is
doing her Ph. D. research on plants native to Michigan and the Great Lakes
region. Specifically, she is trying to understand the origin and conservation
genetic status of the Great Lakes endemic Solidago houghtonii. Pam
received her M.S. in 1996 from Western Michigan University studying the
flora of Seidman Park in Kent County, Michigan. She is currently a faculty
member at Grand Rapids Community College and is the president of the Michigan
Botanical Club. To contact Pam Email her at: Plaureto@grcc.edu
Beth
Whately is
doing her Ph. D. research on the Lake Huron tansy (Tanacetum huronense).
She will be looking at the population genetics and taxonomy of this state
threatened species. Beth received her M.S. from Central Michigan University
in 2004 where she conducted a floristic inventory of Hog Island, an uninhabited
member of the Beaver Island Archipelago. To contact Beth, e-mail her at:
beth.whately@wmich.edu
Jamie Lim
is pursuing her Ph. D. in the study of Rafflesia, the largest flower in
the world. Rafflesia is a rare and threatened root parasite that occurs
only on the islands of Southeast Asia. The main objectives of her dissertation
are:1.) Resolving the phylogeny of the genus
2.) Placement of the family within the global Angiosperm phylogeny
3.) Assessing population genetics of Rafflesia population in Sabah.
Jamie received her B.S. in Genetics and Conservation from the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) in 2000. To contact Jamie, e-mail her at jamie.lim@wmich.edu
Talline
Robadey is an undergradute
at WMU working towards her B.S. in Biological Sciences. Talline has been
working on evolutionary studies of the nuclear gene, salicyic acid methyltransferase
(SAMT). Thus far she has estimated Solanaceae (Potato Family) phylogeny
using SAMT and is now studying expression patterns of the gene to test hypotheses
of convergent or parallel evolution of floral scent in the family. To contact
Talline, e-mail her at 
Nabeeh
Hasan is an undergraduate at WMU working
towards his B.S. in Biological Sciences. In collaboration with Joel R. McNeal
(from Pennsylvania State University), Nabeeh has been working on producing
a cDNA library for Cuscuta exaltata developing haustoria and making evolutionary
inferences about whether the isolated nuclear genes of this parasite are
evolving under relaxed selective constraint. To contact Nabeeh, e-mail him
at: