Internships

Sava Evangelista ’26

Major

Computer Science

Project Title

Probing Microbial Colonization of Plants During Drought to Enable Microbiome-mediated Resilience in Crops

The primary goal of my project was to grow plants in a simulated drought environment and to analyze their root microbiomes. This data will enable us to identify which bacterial strains become enriched during drought and study them in hopes of creating techniques that would allow plants to survive better in drought conditions. I helped prepare farmland for the high tunnel used for the research and participated in many other projects at the Stony Ford Seed Farm. Additionally, I assisted postdoctoral researchers with their gene knockout experiments, took root measurements and imaged seedlings. Through this project and with the guidance of my mentors, I have gained a lot of lab experience and more general science knowledge and I was especially interested to observe the amount of meticulosity that goes into each step of an experiment. Although I don’t think I will pursue work in the chemical and biological engineering field, the internship was helpful in providing me with a further understanding of the sciences.

* This internship is connected to the HMEI Water and the Environment Grand Challenges project, “Probing Microbial Colonization of Plants During Drought to Enable Microbiome-Mediated Resilience in Crops.”