Spotlight on Jesús

Graduate Student Jesús Martínez-Gómez appears in today’s Student Spotlight by the Graduate School.  A few highlights are below:

Jesús Martínez-Gómez is a doctoral candidate in plant biology from Ferndale, Washington. After attending the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington as an undergraduate, he decided to pursue further study at Cornell for his advisor and the facilities.

What inspired you to choose this field of study?

I am a sucker for origin stories. I love superhero movies where protagonists find their superpowers and use it to save the day. Their origins will often contextualize their future struggles as they deal with the ramification of their superpowers. I think evolutionary biology is one big origin story. We strive to identify the origin of species relationships or the genes which produce diverse structures. These stories are compelling as they tell us where we come from and how the world around us is related. Plants in particular pose one of the largest origin story questions as they are so diverse and so important to our everyday life.