Cat received her BS from the University of Washington in Ecology and Evolution and is now a first year PhD student in Organismal and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. She is interested in the evolutionary ecology of plant-fungal interactions, and has spent years studying wild chili peppers and the molds they fend off with their spice. Cat is expanding her dissertation work to consider how plants have evolved with the symbiotic fungi on their roots that exchange nutrients. She has several science journalism articles published in Northwest Science and Technology Magazine (www.nwst.org) and Harvard University's Science in the News Flash (http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/sitn-flash/). When she feels like being less serious, Cat writes for her heavy metal music-themed blog, Science is Metal.