three defenses
Super congratulations to Eliza Shepherd, Brennan Wenck-Riley, and Jessica Peak on their successful thesis defenses! Eliza talked about her super-cool project with local rarity ranks and local rare hotspots in Sonoma County, Brennan talked about collecting and describing Marasmius from the Death Road in Bolivia, and Jessica ruined all of my abilities to identify hyper-variable Calochortus in the field. Every talk was different and had great ideas, some of which I had to look up the references for later. Great job all around!
SFSU [staggered] celebrations
Attended the masters thesis defense of Rebecca Stubbs on her Polemonium research at SFSU this week. One of the best presentations I have seen, and really stoked for her and Dr. Patterson and the whole grad group. Congratulations! Looking forward to the other upcoming defenses this semester [Jessica Peak, Eliza Shepard, Brennan Wenck-Riley], good luck to everybody in your preparations and graduation. It is really fantastic to see how amazing and productive everyone is there – wonderfully inspiring. They have all helped me learn a ton and persist, and I am really thankful for their support and advice over the years.
