BIOGRAPHY

Scott Kalberer is a graduate student in our laboratory currently completing his Master of Science degree. Scott is native of Plainville, Connecticut. He obtained his BA (arts) degree in 2001 from Hamilton College in upstate New York with a concentration in Biology and a minor in Chemistry. He graduated as the salutatorian of the class of 2001 and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi.

Scott volunteered during the summer of 1998 at the Great Gull Island research station, operated by the American Museum of Natural History, recording data on the reproduction of common and roseate terns. He spent the summer of 1999 at The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, CT. Working under Dr.Donald Aylor, who studies the aerial dispersion of the apple scab pathogen (the ascomycete Venturia inaequalis, Scott collected ascospores and checked apple trees for disease symptoms. In the summer of 2000 he helped Dr. William Pfitsch study the endomycorrhizal symbiosis in Aster novae-angliae, Aster prenanthoides, and Aster divericatus. This project involved estimates of fungal colonization, gas exchange analysis using a CO2 analyzer, and biomass allocation measurements. Using these same techniques, his undergraduate senior thesis with Dr. Pfitsch in 2000-2001 described the effects of simulated defoliation on Aster novae-angliae and endomycorrhizae. The results of this research were presented as a poster at the Ecological Society of America meeting in 2001.

After graduation Scott worked as a laboratory technican for two years. At Whyco Technologies, an electroplating factory in Thomaston, CT, he maintained quality control over chemistry of plating baths and tested wastewater for pollution. As part of Edison Coatings in Plainville, CT he created custom formulas of masonry, paint, and epoxies to match the color and texture of buildings requiring restoration. Scott arrived at Iowa State University in Aug. 2003 as a Plant Science Institute Fellow in the Interdepartmental Plant Physiology Major and later changed his major in Horticulture in the summer of 2004 to pursue M.S. degree under the guidance of Dr. Rajeev Arora.

MASTER's RESEARCH at Iowa State University

Scott's MS research concentrates on the frost dehardening and rehardening of floral buds of deciduous azaleas and its relationship to genotypic biogeography. It was carried out with assistance from Dr. Rajeev Arora, Dr. Steven Krebs of the Holden Arboretum, and Norma Leyva-Estrada from the Iowa State Department of Statistics.

Woody perennials must resist cold dehardening and reharden effectively after unseasonably warm winter conditions. But few controlled experiments have examined dehardening kinetics of woody plants during the initial period of exposure to elevated temperatures. The impact of dehardening duration on the capacity to reharden after the return of cold temperatures is also largely unknown. Knowledge of plant cold hardening and dehardening would improve our understanding of stress physiology, ecology, and phenology. We used nine genotypes of deciduous azalea (Rhododendron L.) from eight known provenances to investigate the role of biogeographical origin in floral bud dehardening and rehardening after controlled dehardening.

........stay tuned for the findings of this study