PhD Candidate, Integrative Biology, University of California Berkeley
NSF Graduate Research Fellow
DS421 Fellow
Contact: cmt2@berkeley.edu
Github: https://github.com/
Carrie is broadly interested in understanding trait evolution and adaptation in plants, including how plants have adapted to different historic climate scenarios and how human influence has shaped patterns of evolution in ethnobotanically relevant plants. Carrie’s dissertation research focuses on the evolution of underground storage organs, primarily in the monocot order Liliales. She is particularly interested in the genus Bomarea, which has unique underground morphologies and occurs across a broad range of environments in Central and South America. She uses statistical models, genetic and morphology data, and species occurrence records to understand the history of trait evolution in this group.
In addition to her passion for using evolutionary biology to understand the impacts of climate change on biodiversity, Carrie is committed to advocating for policies that advance women and underrepresented communities in science. In her free time, she enjoys baking award-winning cookies (often botanically or evolutionarily-inspired), rock climbing, and hiking.
Carrie hails from Honolulu Hawaii. She received her BA in Biology, with a concentration in Environmental Studies, from Williams College in 2013 where she completed a Biology Senior Honors Thesis on population genetic structure of a sub-population of Sagina nodosa, with particular interest in how climate change may impact this cold-adapted plant species. She presented this research at the Evolution meetings in 2013 as part of a NESCent travel award. From 2013-2014 Carrie traveled to Cusco, Peru on a Fulbright Student Research Grant where she conducted ecological and ethnobotanical research on population range and distribution of high-altitude wild medicinal plants. She then received an internship with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama where she lived since from Oct 2014-Aug 2015, working on annual variation in tree growth and mortality on the forest dynamics plots on Barro Colorado Island (BCI).