What brought you to the USA?
While I was an undergraduate student at the University of Porto, my advisor encouraged me to apply to a U.S. university for a research internship. One year after I finished my internship, I returned to the U.S. to do an additional three month period of research. These two intensive periods at Illinois, in addition to UIUC being a great place to study corn, convinced me to start my master and PhD degrees at the same university. So, I decided to stay at UIUC to do my post-graduate degrees.

In what are you currently working on?
My research project is the genetic evaluation of root complexity in maize. During my internship and master's program, our research group developed an evaluation system that allowed us to classify the complexity of primary and secondary maize root systems. This classification is performed by applying mathematic algorithms to maize root images. Root complexity is of great importance because is effects directly the response of plants to abiotic and biotic stresses, e.g., drought or insect pests. I really enjoy working in this project because our approach of analysing root systems is unique and high-throughput - our maize root image database contains more than 20,000 root images and it's growing! Our approach will allow plant breeders to quantify root complexity in a meaningful way for making sound selection decisions and help us to find gene networks involved in the inheritance of root complexity by combining phenotypes with DNA sequence variation. When it comes to my PhD research, I want to investigate the genetic basis of root complexity. So, I want to try to answer the question of what gene or genes influence root complexity. In addition, there are several experiments that I am conducting at this point, such as investigating the effect of ear and tassel mutants on root development and complexity and correlate other agronomic traits with root development and complexity.

What conditions do you have here that you do not have in Portugal?
As you know, USA is a melting pot. This means that you can interact with students and professors from different parts of the world. Collaborating with these people will broaden your horizons and give you a chance to try different approaches to solve the same problem. In addition to this, as a student in the US, I can take classes according to my preference and research interests. The last but not least, UIUC has the best library system in the US (top 4). This gives me an opportunity to access the most recent published research articles or books for free.

What are your future plans?
Graduate!! After graduation, I am thinking of working in a breeding company for a few years.

Why did you join PAPS?
First, I joined PAPS because a Portuguese friend told me about it. Second, I'm the only Portuguese student that I know at my university. I believe that PAPS is a great way to interact with other Portuguese people who live in your area, as well as know what the rest of the Portuguese student community in the US is doing.