PBI Role | Professional Experience | Personal Statement |
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Christiane Weirauch is a Collaborating Scientist and former postdoctoral trainee on the PBI project (2003 to 2006). Her postdoctoral research focused on the Western Nearctic fauna of Phylini and on the then largely undescribed diversity of Phylini in Australia. She has continued this work during her time as a Collaborating Scientist. |
Christiane finalized her PhD in 2003 at the Freie Universität Berlin, where she worked on systematics of Reduviidae. The PBI postdoc allowed her to conduct field work in South Africa, California, Australia, and Mexico. She also gained experience in descriptive and revisionary work on plant bugs, focusing on the speciose tribe Phylini. Christiane joined the faculty at the Department of Entomology at the University of California, Riverside in 2007, where she now researches and teaches as an Associate Professor of Entomology. |
The PBI offered an incredible opportunity to gain knowledge on a heteropteran group other than Reduviidae, do field work and research with the experts, and experience the American Museum of Natural History. The project also gave me first hand experience with the development and use of the PBI locality database, the mirid digital library, and the electronic catalog, all implementations that were and are crucial for the success of other big-scale NSF-funded projects that I am involved in such as the Reduviid PEET and the Tri-Trophic Databasing project. |