Cynthia Gerlein Safdi

Cynthia first joined the Caylor Lab in Spring 2011 and spent six months applying geophysical methods (ground penetrating radar and electromagnetic induction) to solve environmental questions. After a few months spent in Chile, she came back to the Caylor Lab and started her PhD in September, 2012.

She spent her first summer doing fieldwork at Silas Little Experimental Forest (NJ) with Adam, studying plant hydraulics and water theft between trees.

After passing her General Exams in May 2014, she started working on her thesis project looking at the influence of non-meteoric water deposition on the water status of Colocasia esculenta leaves using stable isotopes as tracers.

In May 2014, Cynthia got awarded a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship. In June 2014, she received a PEI-STEP Fellowship to spend part of PhD working on an aspect of environmental policy. The picture above was taken in Kenya and shows John teaching Cynthia how to use an augur.

From 2015 to 2017, Cynthia was an Exchange Scholar at Harvard University, working in Pr. N.M. Holbrook’s lab in the department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

Cynthia is currently at the University of Michigan, where she is a Michigan Society of Fellows postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, College of Engineering.