NYBG Science Grads: Robin Sleith

Posted in NYBG Grad Students on December 16, 2013 by Matt Newman

The New York Botanical Garden may be a hub of environmental conservation and a botanical museum, but it’s also an institution of growth—and I’m not just referencing our plant collections. Here in our laboratories we host an international body of students whose enthusiasm for botany and its related disciplines fires a passion for learning, with many of them pursuing graduate degrees through research at the NYBG. Of these, a handful were more than happy to sit down and tell us about their chosen fields and the motivations that brought them here, as well as the tools and techniques they employ in their day-to-day studies.

As a first-year grad student with a specialization in freshwater green algae, Robin Sleith spends plenty of time around lakes and rivers, often trawling for algal species with an improvised tool that Dr. Kenneth Karol and his post-doc, Dr. John Hall, dreamed up from an egg whisk. But while the collection methods may be simplistic, the science behind Sleith’s studies is anything but. Check out the video below to see how a childhood spent exploring the wilderness of New Hampshire led Robin to the cusp of a career as a scientist and conservationist.

Stay tuned to Science Talk in the coming weeks as we speak with more graduate students from our laboratories, and discover the varied backgrounds and disciplines that brought them to the NYBG.