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  • Cornell AgriTech
  • School of Integrative Plant Science
  • Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology Section
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Like other students in Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, graduate students based at Cornell AgriTech are adapting to the challenges of remote learning during the COVID-19 crisis. As students from the Geneva campus continue to pursue their academic degrees from remote locations, some needed to complete their degree virtually. Chris Peritore-Galve, a Ph.D. student studying under Chris Smart, professor of plant pathology and plant-microbe biology, recently defended his Ph.D. dissertation via Zoom. We asked him to tell us what that was like.

What have you been doing to continue your academic studies from a remote location?

My first step after we were notified of the shutdown was to prepare a nice work space in my house with essential office supplies like a wireless mouse, keyboard and extra monitor to help me write. I rigged up an ergonomic desk using piles of books, which has worked just fine. My second step was to lower my expectations for myself by a lot. Seriously, there is no way that we can expect ourselves to be “normally” productive during a global pandemic. So I would schedule menial things like feeding the birds and taking a break to go outside to make sure that I didn’t just sit in my office all day. I was very fortunate to already be in writing mode. I didn’t have to collect any more data to write my dissertation. I am also lucky that I had already written the largest portion of it before the pandemic. To maintain productivity while writing I would set a timer for ten minutes, during which I was not allowed to get distracted and would focus on writing. Typically, I would keep writing past the timer and take a break when I started running out of steam.

What have Cornell AgriTech faculty members done to support your remote learning and your Ph.D. dissertation?

My advisor, Chris Smart, has had weekly meetings with each person in the lab. We have a weekly lab meeting where we read a popular science article on unrelated topics – like strategies to colonize the moon, the restoration of Notre Dame, thousand-year-old Siberian squirrels, or synthetic cells – and then we talk about the articles. We also have a lab coffee break every day where we chat informally about random things that we’re doing.

 

What is the topic of your dissertation?

My thesis is titled “Colonization Studies of Clavibacter Michiganensis in Fruit and Xylem of Diverse Solanum Species.” Clavibacter michiganensis is the causal agent of bacterial canker of tomato, a disease that affects growers every year here in New York and around the world. The first chapter focuses on differences in bacterial colonization in susceptible cultivated tomato versus colonization of tolerant wild tomatoes. The second chapter is from a collaboration with Jim Giovannoni, adjunct professor in plant biology in the School of Integrative Plant Science, where we aimed to understand the link between tomato fruit developmental stage and their susceptibility to bacterial canker, bacterial speck and bacterial spot. All three of those diseases occur in New York every year. The third chapter is a current and ongoing collaboration with Gaurav Moghe’s group in plant biology where we used mass spectrometry techniques to profile changes in xylem sap composition of wild and cultivated tomatoes during bacterial canker disease. We were interested in changes in xylem sap composition because C. michiganensis colonizes the xylem, which is a low nutrient environment. Finally, my last chapter is a collaboration with Paul Stodghill (Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology), Ted Thannhauser (USDA protein chemist) and Dave Schneider (USDA computational biologist). We generated a proteome profile of C. michiganensis to provide evidence for secretion of virulence proteins and to refine the reference genome.

What was it like defend your dissertation as a videoconference?

Honestly, it was difficult. My family and some friends were planning on traveling here to come to my defense and to celebrate with me, so it was hard to be positive about the experience. It was also difficult to talk into a small webcam instead of to an audience of people where I could see their faces and adjust to the crowd. I am incredibly thankful that my roommates were able to be in the room with me during the seminar, and I presented it using the TV in the living room. My roommates threw me a nice little celebration afterwards. I’m super thankful to them, and I’m lucky that we were all social distancing together.

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