Marshall Sherfield Fellow Rebecca started working in plant molecular biology at the ripe age of 15 when she began researching ultraviolet-sensitive mutants of the weed Arabidopsis. She has since studied plants' biosynthesis of color compounds, parthenogenic reproduction, response to growth hormones, and resistance to pathogens. She will take the Marshall Sherfield Fellowship to the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, England where she will join the research group of David Baulcombe investigating the nature of gene silencing. Though she has stayed in the field of plant biology, her undergraduate studies at the University of Arizona (in Molecular & Cellular Biology and Biochemistry) and graduate work at Duke University (in Genetics) have ensured she is more of a molecular than a plant biologist. (A fact which is evident from the number of houseplants she has killed.) Outside of the laboratory, she enjoys socializing, travel, swimming, and yoga.