Student Profiles
Our students are amazing scholars, researchers, teachers, and innovators. We celebrate their achievements and the work they do as students at UC Santa Cruz, and beyond.
Cancer Treatment and Science Communication – Two Important Goals for Alumna Tori Klein
By Marissa Maciel
Researchers at UC Santa Cruz are looking for new ways to fight cancer cells unable to be penetrated by small-molecule medications (cells called undruggable targets). Natural chemical compounds such as those found in fungi and bacteria are being examined as potential treatments which could penetrate these cells. UC Santa Cruz Alumna Tori Klein (Ph.D. Chemistry, 2020), presented her research on Cordyceps, a fungus, and its ability to kill cancerous tumor cells at the 2020 UC Santa Cruz Grad Slam competition – a three-minute dissertation presentation conducted across campus for all graduate students in every division.
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Rick Flores, Curator, Graduate Student
By Marissa Maciel
Rick Flores earned his undergraduate degree in 1997, and returned to graduate school two years ago in the Environmental Studies program at UC Santa Cruz. Between his two phases of higher education, Flores worked at the UCSC Arboretum, which set him on a path towards graduate school.
Flores was the Curator of the California Native Plant Collection at the Arboretum, which he said “naturally led me to start learning about the ethnobotany of the California Indians.” In 2009 the Arboretum started a program with an indigenous community, the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band (AMTB). The pairing, called the Amah Mutsun Relearning Program, was established to, as Flores said, “help assist them in their efforts to relearn their ethnobotany and traditional ecological knowledge.”
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Art, Science, Symbiosis with Juniper Harrower
By Marissa Maciel
Jennifer “Juniper” Harrower is a third-year graduate student in the Environmental Studies Doctoral Program at UC Santa Cruz. Her research examines human influence on biodiversity in protected areas. Recently, she shared her research interests and described her path to graduate school with the Division of Graduate Studies.
Harrower’s work focuses on the Joshua tree, “and their symbionts, using both laboratory and field methods.” This research comes at a crucial point in time, with predictions of the elimination of the Joshua tree from its current range based on the effects of climate change in the Southwest. “Joshua trees will be greatly affected by the changing climate, and models predict they could be mostly extinct from Joshua Tree National Park within 100 years,” she said.
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