Josie Kearns

Undergraduate Fellow, Plant Disease Team

Why were you interested in Team Plant Disease? What about the team sparked your interest?   

“When I first heard about it, it reminded me of my plants at home. I have a big plant collection and there are some diseases that have been spreading and I thought, maybe it's similar. Thinking a bit more about it, I thought this team's work could be very applicable to agriculture. And where I lived growing up, there is a lot of agriculture. Plant disease inspired me to study something that could be applied to help that.” 

Growing up in a rural area south of San Francisco, California, she was often surrounded by nature. As a result, Josie has developed a fondness towards science.  

“I have definitely always liked science. It was one of my favorite subjects, and I was super excited when I went to middle school after not having too much science in elementary school. I got to have it every day. That was exciting for me. I'm not really sure where my interest in science came from. Probably just living along the coast and being in nature a lot. Going hiking and going to the beach all the time.”

At Tyson, she has gotten her first experience doing scientific research and is learning about what happens behind the scenes, in a real-life lab setting.  

“It has been really cool, to see how research is done. An actual research project and working on a team is a lot different than a chemistry lab or something like that. Just seeing a real experiment being conducted. Some things do not go as planned and you make changes as needed.”