Chodon Sass

Dr. Chodon Sass received her PhD in Plant Biology from UC Berkeley in 2010 working on evolution, systematics and genetic diversity in the Bromeliad genus Aechmea (and allies).  She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Craig Moritz working on biogeography and next generation sequencing in Australian reptiles.  During this time she worked with fellow postdoc Ke Bi and Sonal Singhal to develop bioinformatic tools and pipelines for acquiring and analyzing NGS data including using transcriptomes to design baits for hyb-seq.  She returned to the Specht Lab in 2015 and is now a Research Associate, working on comparative methods for phylogenetic analyses and developing NGS data and pipelines for various lineages of plants, including Zingiberales, Calochortus, Sapindales and Burseraceae (in collaboration with Paul Fine’s lab).  She has a particular interest in developing herbaria and museum collections as key resources for genetic and phylogenetic studies.