Isabel Smalley stands inside the greenhouse on the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) campus, surrounded by ferns and succulents. Although these particular ferns aren’t her study subjects, her undergraduate research will soon culminate in naming a new fern species.

Before coming to UMD, Smalley, a senior, was unsure of her career path. Initially an English major, she shifted her focus after taking general biology and computer science classes. “I found a passion for evolution and plants,” she says. “I really got inspired.”

She switched to a double major in biology and computer science.

Combining the two fields made perfect sense to Smalley. To study evolution and genetics, “you need to have some really complicated computer programs,” she says. “And that software doesn’t always work, so by using my computer science background, I can change the software or alter it to better study plant genetics and plant evolution.”

Diving into science

Since 2021, Smalley has been working with Amanda Grusz, an expert on ferns who serves in UMD’s Swenson College of Science and Engineering as an associate professor of biology and director of the Olga Lakela Herbarium.

“I was really fortunate to join Dr. Grusz’s lab early,” says the recipient of the UMD Swenson Summer Research Scholarship. Initially, it was just Smalley, Grusz, and one other undergraduate student, “diving into science, which was really cool.”

Since then, the group has grown, together exploring and experimenting to uncover the mysteries of fern evolution. “I’ve done four different projects in the lab, mostly focused on cryptic diversity or finding new species within a genus or species complex.”

According to Grusz, Smalley is undertaking a taxonomic and evolutionary study to reveal a new species of desert fern from southwestern North America.

“The integrative skills of Isabel’s chosen degree programs are allowing her to combine molecular biology and supercomputing,” Grusz says, “to take the very first steps toward sequencing a genome of the new species.”

Research recognition

Smalley’s research has earned her two national awards: the Botanical Society of America Undergraduate Research Award and the American Society of Plant Taxonomy Undergraduate Research Award.

In addition to lab work for the project, Smalley joined her mentor in the field to survey this new species’ populations and determine its geographic distribution. Early on, Smalley and her co-researchers expected they were dealing with a new species, but she had the opportunity to distinguish and name it. “That was really fun,” she says.

“Every plant has a preserved specimen somewhere that defines that species, like a dictionary,” she says. “And so my job was to determine what applies to the definition of this fern and what doesn’t.”

After graduation, Smalley hopes to pursue a career in bioinformatics or continue her studies in a statistical phylogenetics lab.

“UMD has prepared me for that in a lot of different ways,” she says. “When I came to UMD, I never thought I’d be able to do all this. I love it so much. I want to spend the rest of my life doing it.”

Support students like Isabel Smalley through the UMD Swenson Summer Research Scholarship.