0:00  
Jim: Hello and welcome back to the Plantopia podcast. Plantopia is the plant health podcast of the American Phytopathological Society. And I'm your host, Jim Bradeen I'm a professor of plant pathology and associate vice president of the Colorado State University. And today I am talking with Dr. Karen Ferreira de Silva. As an undergraduate student, Karen first studied dance and soon realized a love for plants, graduating with a degree in agronomy. She earned an MS degree in entomology from the University of Nebraska Lincoln, and in 2020, earned her PhD in agronomy and horticulture with a plant pathology emphasis also at UNL. Her PhD has a really intriguing title. It's called two dimensions for improving plant health, characterization of biotic interactions underlying plant immunity, and a nationwide survey on developing future leaders in the plant science disciplines. Karen's work examined hormonal crosstalk in maize subjected simultaneously to two biotic stresses the Goss's bacterial wilt and leaf-like pathogen and the chewing insect the full armyworm and in this work her colleagues compare and contrast the salicylic and jasmonic acid mediated responses in a complex tripartite experiment. And last year she published this work in Arthropod Plant Interactions. Karen's work also examined the leadership development opportunities for graduate students in plant sciences identifying this has been presented both at the Plant Health and Technological Society of America annual meetings. And currently, Karen and her colleagues are working on a manuscript for publication in a peer reviewed journal. And today we're going to explore both aspects of Karen's PhD research. Today, Karen is a field scientist with Corteva Agriscience. And she's stationed in Woodland, California. And we'll hear from her perspectives on industry and her advice for plant science students seeking industry careers. I want to point out too, that Karen is the secretary treasurer of the APS Pacific Division. Thank you, Karen for serving. And you can connect with Karen on LinkedIn @ kfdeSilva. Karen, thank you so much for being our guest today on Plantopia.

2:28  
Karen: Thanks, Jim, happy to be here.

2:30  
Jim: We're delighted to have you. I'm really curious about your career path, and how you ended up in plant pathology. We all have our origin stories, and we think of plant pathology often as a discovery field. But you you really started in a very different direction. Could you tell us about your interest in dance and how you ended up in the plant sciences?

2:55  
Karen: Absolutely. Yeah. So growing up, you know, I was involved in several sports, my family I was encouraged me to, to work in a cafe, you know, seeing buting type of sports where you're interacting with a lot of different people. And at that point, I started actually doing ballet or taking ballet classes, and, and really moving towards more competitions. After a few years and, and, you know, it takes a lot of your time and, and, and a lot of discipline to keep up with all those competitions. So it kind of really shaped my home. Like really growing up as a back in my country have just been in this arena of that scene in being very discipline. And so growing up I've always been also very interested in bugs. So we finishing up kind of in high school, we moved to the countryside. And that's where I was involved a lot within nature, agriculture that was very heavy in the region where I moved to when you try to choose what you want to do when you become an adult, right? what career path you want to to to take. I felt that kind of agriculture and girl Nomi would really care for built into that passion that I I started developing around agriculture. The scientific part definitely I developed later on in Gretton in doing my college as an undergraduate degree in agronomy, but that's kind of how I moved from being a dancer to being an agronomist.

4:52  
Jim: And are you still involved in dance?

4:56  
Karen: Well, you know, I would love to come back at some point. I take a few classes here and there when I was in Nebraska, but I think now I just this for fun maybe in you know, when they go parties. That's that's all that I can I can do for those days.

5:20  
Jim: You talk though about dance really requiring discipline. Has that helped you in other aspects of your career or maybe grad school?

5:29  
Karen: It did it did that focus that you you develop as a ballerina, it definitely transfer in other parts of your your life. And I think it's it's one of the actually the major and resilient I think I would say that I think of the major attributes if you are going to grad school, and I'm sure that helped. guiding me through the graduate program.

6:02  
Jim: Yeah, that really sounds like grad school. Yeah. Well, we are very happy that you are in the plant sciences and plant pathology in particular. Could you talk a bit about your PhD research, which I think is pretty unique. There's a lot that's out there already on plant responses to, to biotic challenges whether it's a a pathogen or an insect pest, what's different about your research?

6:35  
Karen: Yeah, so typically, when we are looking at plant host resistance and the testing, looking into, you know, systemic acquired resistance or other attributes, for plan responses, which typically look at, you know, one, and I'll say here, as for for pest management, we'll look into one specific organism, and testing a different collection of different data over that interaction. But my undergraduate degree was in agronomy, so I love plants. And when I started working towards more the pest management side, and I felt that it would have been interesting to understand what's going on in a system, right? Because when we are growing plants out in the field, they are not just being exposed to one single organ if there's a lot of things happening. biotic or abiotic factors that are affecting those plants. So what I wanted to to look at, if we involve other organisms, how can we predict something else that they're just you know, our one model one organism, one plant is not really observing, it's not providing to us. And because of my, my master's degree in homology, I had a good handle working with insects, so I thought that would be a good combination now, or then with my PhD in plant pathology, to combine all those different organisms and look at a more holistic approach on what's how plants are responding in different under different stressors.

8:32  
Jim: So you look specifically at JA or jasmonic acid and sa salicylic acid, what are those and why did you focus on those two systems?

8:45  
Karen: Yeah, so those two are hormones. So, they are known to be induced depending on the pathogen or the past that you are working on, and because I chose clavate, back through Michigan nurses or gasweld in corn and spodoptera frugiperda farm you warm, those should they have a different type of feeding. And we know in literature already that this type different type of feeding will induce a specific responses in the plants which will be in the case of the bacteria because it's bio traffic pathogen who induced salicylic acid and the chewing herbivore for our new auto induce jasmonic acid. So with previous knowledge they already gather from literature, knowing kind of how it that is specific responses, those specific responses, I think it would kind of make it easier to move on with our objectives, especially when we are in cluding so many different factors or stressors.

10:03  
Jim: So to summarize clavate factor triggers SA mediated responses, and the fall army worm triggers, JA mediated responses and they tend to be antagonistic. Right?

10:17  
Karen: They do. Yeah. So that's another piece that it's also widely known in literature is that they cross they have this cross talk and they antagonistic to each other.

10:29  
Jim: Really, really interesting. So tell us about your experimental approach. And what you found,

10:37  
Karen: As I'll say, wearing the biology hat, being a biologist, I was really looking into what is going on as far as for past development in and maybe some what's going on in the plant, when we are putting all the stressors together, and and all those those tests we're performing in a greenhouse or more control environment, to, again, it's a complex system that we're trying to minimize any other stressors that might be happening out there. So why don't like to I wanted to understand what's going on with those passes? Is there any other? Is it one pass, mitigating the development other past or what's going on in the plans when those two important core pests are attacking the corn seedling and then the other aspect I wanted to see is what's going on with the hormones? Are they really also being simulated out there as a defense mechanism, or they are really doing anything as far as being that host plant defense mechanism that we are seeing when there's just one specific pest. And what I did I, as I said in the greenhouse, I expose it, both Oregon used to the plants. And it was kind of interesting just to determine how to do that, because you know how you're going to inoculate a bacteria in the plants, but also, you're going to have the chewing factor happening there. So it took me a while just to develop that essay to ensure that we're capturing what would happen in nature. And then, after that, I would have collected samples and sent to the lab, so do more than molecular work in in looking into real time PCR the levels of hormones.

12:46  
Jim: So the data that you generated in your study are transcription data for particular reporter genes in the JA and SA biosynthesis pathways.

12:57  
Karen: Yes. So once I collected the samples that were that suffered that symbolized from both the pathogen and the the insect, I have performed the transcriptomic. And we use the pathogenic related genes to look for this salicylic acid, and some other reporter genes for jasmonic acid. And in addition to that, we also send to look at hormone levels in our proteomics and metabolomics facility at the university. And that actually gave us so much data, it was not only to choose to hormones, but we also got data from ethylene and some other hormones that, you know, if you're a biochemistry, you would have a lot of fun, just try to identify all those pathways. And if there are correlating split, I tried to make it simple and looking at the salicylic acid and jasmonic acid pathways.

13:59  
Jim: So it sounds like this is a really data rich project. And you've you've published a portion of this last year in arthropod plant interactions and we'll include a link to this article on the Plantopia.org website. But I'm curious what comes next for this particular project.

14:20  
Karen: Right. So for next we will like to, to work on in the validation and offer this essay. We did see that that antagonistic crosstalk happening for just Monika salicylic acid. And just to add a little bit of complexity after this project, we tested different varieties of corn. So we saw that resistant variety to the bacteria. A pathogen is paid for providing some enhance the development of our new arm but I think we need to look into Two more that specifically, that those are specific instances where you're testing, maybe other bad traffic pathogens, just to kind of confirm if we're seeing this, this pattern of responses. And we also love to see how in a broad spectrum, how other hormones are also being assimilating or being produced on over under this past host combinations that we try it in this assays. And ultimately, what we like to see is in under field conditions, right and more not as control environments, we will see some of those, those episodes because, you know, if we're looking at one pathogen or one pests that is affecting the development of other pathogen in the field, and this could be warriors, that we are when we are using some resistant varieties out in the field that could not be working, because there are other factors out there that are affecting their planned responses and the the immune system.

16:22  
Jim: Biology certainly is very complicated. And maybe you've taken an important step towards understanding some of that complication. But there clearly is a lot more to be done. And I look forward to see seeing where this research goes in the future to the thanks for sharing that that project. Now, your your PhD, of course, also include this, this other very different type of research that was focused on a nationwide survey to understand what leadership looks like in plant science disciplines. How did you get involved in this line of research?

16:59  
Karen: Yeah, that's, I think that's the most exciting file for my Ph. D, is how I got involved to Leadership Development Studies. And kind of the heading going back a little bit when I when I started my, my master's degree in Theology at the University of Nebraska. You know, we, as a students, we are focused on our research and all the the technical aspects of this, but I wanted to improve on my communication skills, I wanted to kind of talk about different topics and, and continue interacting with other students that are not in my lab, or, you know, what I was doing research with that, I was hoping that those types of interactions would help with my communication skills. I came from from South America, to United States and in communication for me was important as something that I wanted to improve. So I had amazing mentors and advisors there to support me to get involved with student clubs, the Entomology Department have have having an incredible student organization there, housed in the Department. And so, I started attending those meetings and interacting with topics beyond my research, and can naturally really start leading me to more towards the student advocacy. So then I started attending the grad student or Graduate Student Association of the university. So getting involved in that aspect. I became the president of the GSA the graduate Graduate Student Association UNL. Then I from from that grew up I also did get involved with the National Graduate Student Association in DC so I was the one the bar director and also internationally student advocate for the whole The National Association, so kind of a naturally things leading to them or I can leadership and advocacy activities. And when I was in the pathology department, see me ever heard my advisor at that time, and together with the Dean of the College agriculture, natural resources, Tiffany hang Dr. Tiffany Hank Moss, they approached me and if I was interested to look into the survey, that will identify ways we could improve leadership development among graduate students. And when they brought this topic because, you know, I was already in volved in sort of this leadership component, I was very excited. I was like, Yeah, I would love to work with it. But obviously, you know, it's such a different type of science that we can talk about it. But at the beginning, I think it was very exciting. And I'm grateful that Sydney and Tiffany, they, they gave me this opportunity to, to help. So I was kind of already advocating trying to help in in the the graduate student level, but kind of for maker a broader impact nationally in helping graduate students.

20:40  
Jim: Wonderful, I was actually going to ask you what your graduate advisors thought of including this particular topic in your PhD thesis. But it seems like they were the impetus for this, which is really refreshing. And you alluded to the fact that this type of a survey approach is really a very different skill set. It's it's more of a social science skill set a think. And so the design of an experimental approach of design of a survey analysis of data really pulls in other areas of expertise, then we might additionally have in in plant pathology, how did you how did you broach these subjects? Have you worked with other individuals in this topic?

21:27  
Karen: Yes. So I had help with several professionals at the university. And at the beginning, Seanie was really helping me a lot to kind of just identify, what are the goal of our survey? What are the topics that we want to approach and then I worked with the the Social Sciences at the University, to elaborate questions. I also had a pilot survey that I actually selected a few professionals that I was able to validate those questions that were coming, or elaborate, elaborating, were valid. And when it makes sense for us, in swipes for the analysis of the results of the survey, I did help with physician, the statistics department helped me a lot of analyzing some of the quantitative data. And then for the qualitative data, I had help from the sociological department UNL

22:36  
Jim: It sounds like you learned a lot of different disciplines, in the context of this is really exciting. So give us an example of questions that you asked in this survey.

22:50  
Karen: The survey was composed of 50 questions, and they are divided into different blocks. But for me, the most difficult part was to elaborating demographic questions. This is one of the most important questions that you have in a survey, because you can lose so much data information if you ask the right questions, as far as for the demographics. So that was one piece that for me, it was important and and I learned a lot doing that. So questions will be the employment type of the participants, where they are working, if they are grad students, or they are already professionals already graduated. What type of leadership experiences that they've been performing more formal leadership roles or informal experiences that don't don't have a formal position? I'll say a a defined role. Other questions for the demographics? Would it be what if they are in leadership roles? What levels of seniority that they would be? So we had to really think about how we want to approach this demographics because that's what would lead us to correlate with the other blocks later on and come up with the data and the results.

24:30  
Jim: So ultimately, your survey went to graduate students and working professionals worldwide or in the US.

24:39  
Karen: Yeah. So with this survey, we so we focus nationally, and those the participants were looking at it they would have been the agricultural Plant Sciences disciplines, and to make it easier to collect this participants In this poor participants we approach and in a way, we basically focus on the societies. So we looked into the American Phytopathological Society, the Thermological Society, and the Tree Societies, we found that looking into these different societies, we wouldn't be able to collect a more diverse pool of participants, but it's still being within the agricultural plants, the sciences. But those, this survey was a national survey. And then beyond that, we we were really interested in looking at getting getting most of the experiences from this professionals and grad students on how we can improve leadership in

25:50  
Jim: So I think we all want to know, at this point, what what did you find out?

25:55  
Karen: Yes, that's, so we, we have a lot of data, Jim. And we actually had to focus on specific topics, because we we got to a very, very interesting data, but a lot of data. Just to give you a an insight here, we we send out to almost 7000 people this survey, and we got 15% completion rate for this survey, which is considered very, very high. If you look around, just survey completion rates in general. And from there, we're looking in our main goal, we know that leadership is important leadership development is important. But we want to to narrow down how we can improve leadership development within universities. So we're looking at some experiences and activities that those professionals had during grad school. Some were looking to importance on the professional skills, and other other people will say, with no intelligence, but we can focus on professional skills as the topic of interest. We also wanted to look at what are the barriers there are in grad school, that it's kind of being detrimental for the leadership development. And one of the most interesting parts of this survey, we asked kind of open ended questions. So the participants that could elaborate on how they envision improving leadership in graduate school. And they provided a lot of good information for us. And my interest, and my focus was looking at, of course, dividing the graduate students versus professionals. We also wanted to look at whether there is any differences in employment type, we asked our participants, if they were in doctoral, doctoral, and universities, in government in industry, and there were a lot of categories there. But when they're trying to understand if there's any differences between doctoral universities or academia versus industry, and the reason for that, and I think, Jim, it's the currently we're seeing as far as for employability that it's, it's deferring a lot of from the past where a lot of the graduate students will get a job get a job being in academia in following the professorship pathway. I think, from what we see right now, there's students that should be more prepared to a broad range of different experiences and employers and employees. So looking at how we can develop a leadership and target different employees. That will give us a student's ability to understand how they can shape up those skills. And if they decided to go to industry like Comey or are going to stay in academia. Those are skills will serve well for them. One of the questions that we asked was, we provide a bunch of a lot of different categories on type of experiences that those participants felt were important for them to develop a leadership. And when we look at this different experience experiences, one interesting observation that we made is that In observing other leaders, was in the top of experiences we call experiences for those participants that helped them in developing leadership skills. And those are what about 43% of our participants are chosen observing other leaders as the top experience for them. That was followed by job experiences. So having that type of exposure helped with leadership development, and also mentoring students. That was also another experience that our participants saw very valuable for 

30:46  
Jim: So actually serving as mentors for students?

30:49  
Karen: Yes, yes. And, and that can be interns, or summer workers that would be in our parts are working in their lab group. And mentoring them. Those are, as far as for type of experiences that those were the main, the top three experiences, and we didn't see any differences between academia and industry, it was anonymous results that those three experiences were very valued for them. But in the other side, when we look at other experiences, such as formal courses, then thought leadership development, or workshops, those participants felt that wasn't really important. But what we found out later on the survey is is that not willing partners, because we don't really have those activities in graduate school are those experiences. So it's hard for us to really rate if it's important or not, if we're majority of us, don't really get that exposure. And later on, when we request the participants to give them more feedback on how we can improve leadership development. Majority of them actually chose formal college courses as the main route for developing leadership.

32:18  
Jim: That's really interesting. How does this translate into advice for universities or graduate programs? Or undergraduate programs?

32:28  
Karen: Yes, and and one thing, so we have to look at what is the current structure right now for foreign universities? Wonderful. Well, let's just make a parallel here when we're looking. So we asked them, what are the barriers that they think that are preventing leadership development universities. And when we looked into the results, the majority of the respondents, they rated them not being part of the program curriculum is one of the barriers, but it also the students lack of divisor support, and lack of funding to support experiences. were among those top three barriers. So I think if we look at those barriers, we could think of ways we can resolve or open up before a more a better understanding on how when universities can help with as a students. And often when we are I was registered and not long ago, and it's hard to put in our day to day activities. That is a research related all that type of activities that can help our leadership development. And oftentimes, there's a lot of pressure out there for us to publish and produce research. And this pressure felt a lot of in the back of advisors, then some of them have the best interest in to help students but sometimes there's not enough time or enough support for them to to help the students and guiding them to this professional development. So I think as the departments and the pathology departments, they, it would have been important for them to start thinking ways they can support advisors in, in really providing that type of mentorship for their graduate students in developing or taking the time to develop other skills that are not only research. When I mentioned from the survey when I asked to the participants. In the survey, one of the questions was also understanding what activities that they are performing during that time in graduate school. And we provided activities such as research, teaching, service, so participating professional societies outreach, and we've saw, we've seen, there is a increase in number of activities that graduate students are participating, comparing from 3040 years ago. So if you're looking to this, this trend of increasing in the activities, not only research, but they're also participating in outreach, they're also participating in professional societies. I think how we can, I think we students, I don't think students are taking full advantage of the other opportunities or type of engagements that are out there. But it's not because they don't want to, I don't think there's enough exposure of this different opportunities for students. And the fact that then, the opportunities out there, but we don't have that engagement. I think that's where perhaps departments and professors and advisors could come together, they should find how those students can assume engaged and at the same time producing their, their, their research work.

36:22  
Jim: Yeah, I see, it's really more about juggling all the opportunities, obviously, being aware of the opportunities, but also having that support to pursue some of these professional development components. And I appreciate that you mentioned our professional societies, whether we're talking about APS or some of the other incredible professional societies, I think they have a collective role to play in professional development of our students as well. So thanks for that shout out. Really incredibly interesting research that you and your colleagues have pursued here. I'm looking forward to seeing that peer reviewed publication in the in the near future. So congratulations on that work. So Karen, one last question I have for you relate to your current role. You were successful in attracting that industry position. And you're now a field scientist with corteva. What do you do on a daily basis?

37:18  
Karen: So for those don't know corteva agriscience is a one of the major agricultural companies and we work with a variety of different solutions for farmers from chemical seeds Digital's so being a field scientist, I get the chance to experience them firsthand that this new products that are going to be in the hands of farmers in the next year, I'm currently at a field located in a field station in Woodland, California. And as a scientist, I the elaborate and also applied trials, research trials, testing this this new solutions and plant pathologist here at the station. But I'm also experiencing or involved in different disciplines, whether is in homology with science, or agronomist with agronomist. So it's a very dynamic role. But it's very exciting because we definitely can get a chance to to, to test this, this exciting solutions that are coming out to the market.

38:38  
Jim: Sounds really exciting. And I imagine with your very diverse background in the plant sciences, that you're exactly at the right place at this stage of your career. So Congratulations on finishing your PhD. And on this new role as well.

38:53  
Karen: Thank you, Jim.

38:55  
Jim: We just heard from Dr. Karen Ferreira da Silva. Karen is a field scientist with corteva agriscience and she was talking today with us about her PhD research and her perspectives on industry and careers. I'm Jim Bradeen, the host of Plantopia podcast. Thank you for joining and we will talk next time.

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