St. Cloud State Today

Angela McDonnell

Company: St. Cloud State University

Position: Assistant Professor, Biology

Areas of Expertise

  • Botany
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Herbarium
  • Greenhouses



Education

Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University.


Biography

I'm an evolutionary biologist and botanist. I really like plants. I grew up in Juneau, Wis., where I became fascinated by the natural world through gardening, hiking, and foraging. After college, I had a job with a biotech company for a few years before I pursued a PhD in Oklahoma, where I did all kinds of stuff I really wanted to do like sequence DNA, collect plants, travel to new places, and analyze data. After grad school, I did postdoctoral appointments with Norm Wickett at the Chicago Botanic Garden, where I worked on transcriptome and genome assembly in the Hawaiian endemic genus Schiedea. I also worked with Chris Martine at Bucknell University on the evolution of Australian Solanum and a rare plants in PA.