On November 4th, Melinda and Sharon flew to Chile to work with colleagues at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH). We are being hosted by Dr Dr. Gustavo E. Zúñiga, Dean of the Faculty. Melinda will be working in the Laboratorio de Fisiología y Biotecnología Vegetal (Plant Physiology and Biotechnology Lab) until February. We worked with Gustavo, Marisol, Tavo and Hans from this group last year in Antarctica. They have been looking after the samples of moss we collected there and Melinda will be extracting compounds from them while she is here.
Melinda has been awarded an Endeavour fellowship to work for six months on this, once her PhD is confirmed.Sharon is staying until the end of November and will be giving seminars at a Climate Change symposium and also running a workshop on writing scientific papers for members of Gustavo's group. We are hoping that our other Chilean collaborator Dr Angélica Casanova Katny will come and visit while we are here and contribute to the symposium.