Melissa
Brechner
2005-2006 CSIP Fellow
Research
Interest
Agricultural & Biological Engineering
With my degrees in biological and horticultural engineering,
as well as my extensive background in entomology and plant
production, I consider myself a jack of all trades. My
engineering background contains all the physics and chemistry
one would expect of such a degree. In addition, I specialize
in controlled environment agriculture (greenhouses) and
have been involved with a diversity of projects that attempt
to manipulate different aspects of the plant’s environment
in order to optimize plant growth or otherwise control
nature. My masters’ work involved how insects called
aphids react to different light and temperature regimes
with regard to their perception (and reaction to –
wings or no wings!) what they perceived as the photoperiod.
My current work involves trying to manipulate the amount
of valuable secondary metabolites produced by medicinal
plants by changing the environment they grow in. The specific
plants I am working with are: St. John’s Wort, Japanese
Knotweed and American Mayapple. I would love to introduce
students to my detective approach to experimentation.
Like any good investigator, I believe the first to finding
the answer is to figure out what we know - and what we
don’t know about a problem. Then, with a few well-designed
experiments, we can increase the amount we know about
a particular puzzle.
The ideal growing conditions for specific medicinal plants
that I am working with now are a bit of a mystery. Generally,
they grow and are harvested in the wild or in fields under
the stars. Growing them under the glass or plastic of
a greenhouse (or even on a windowsill) presents many unknowns
starting with what type of soil, how much light, the best
temperature and the ideal set of nutrients will help them
to grow to their fullest potential. Students can easily
design and test many of these variables to learn the process
of science – and the results of their investigation
will be put to use in my attempts to grow these plants
in a greenhouse and manipulate metabolite content. I would
like students to learn the process of experimental design
and, perhaps more importantly, experimental redesign in
a system that is more complex than it might seem at first.
Recently I have been working with one of the Introductory
Biology courses at Cornell. I also have experience as
a certified Mad Scientist. Ask me about simple and fun
basic chemistry and physics experiments!