I am a professor in the Dept of Plant Pathology and the Genome Center at UC Davis. I have a PhD in Molecular and Physiological Plant Biology from UC Berkeley and was a postdoc at Cornell. I got interested in plant microbe interactions while studying biology at Reed College and later moved to Sweden to study mycorrhizal fungi. I enjoyed living in Sweden/France for three years but am glad to be back in California, where I grew up. When not doing science, I love to spend time hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains with my friends, family and our dog.