Sarah Pardi

In 2018, I graduated from Loyola Marymount University with a B.S. in Biology. During my undergraduate studies, I worked in the plant-molecular biology lab under the mentorship of Dr. Nancy Fujishige where I studied the symbiosis between Melilotus alba, a legume plant, and beneficial nitrogen-fixing rhizobacteria. There, I discovered my passion for understanding how plants interact with their environment at the molecular level, and decided to pursue a career as a biology professor. Being part of the LMU McNair Scholars program served as a crucial guide on my path to graduate school. After graduating from LMU, I moved to the Midwest to pursue my Ph.D. in the Plant and Microbial Biosciences program at Washington University in St. Louis, where I was an IMSD scholar. My doctoral work was in the lab of Dr. Dmitri Nusinow at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. There, I studied a disordered protein’s role in red-light photoperception at the cellular, molecular, and biophysical level in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. I earned my Ph.D. in 2024, and am now a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Rachel Shahan’s lab at UCLA. My research in the Shahan lab focuses on understanding developmental mechanisms using the Arabidopsis root as a model system. Specifically, my research investigates the role of a family of receptor-like kinases in regulating cell-type specific identity and post-embryonic organ development. My passion for teaching and mentoring undergraduates with the ultimate goal of becoming a professor led me to the IRACDA Program. Through IRACDA, I am excited to gain the skills necessary to achieve my career goal of becoming a biology professor who trains and inspires the next generation of scientists, leads cutting edge research in the field of plant biology, and contributes to the broader scientific community.