Laura Clavijo is a second-year Ph.D. student from Columbia in the Department of Biological Sciences. Her research focuses on the classification, evolution and biogeography of tropical flora in the northern Andes with an emphasis on the family Gesneriaceae. During her two years at the University of Alabama, she has been a Teaching Assistant. She has published plant
inventories for the Colombian Amazon and the northern Andes, and during the last two years she has described three new plant species discovered during fieldwork in Colombia and Peru. Before starting the Ph.D. program she worked for ten years as a botanist with the National Herbarium of Colombia. This experience allowed her to explore and conduct research in remote and biodiverse regions of the Colombian Amazon and the Chocó Biogeographic regions. An important contribution of her research was to work with local indigenous communities and capacitate park guards about the taxonomy and natural history of local flora. She has received several grants and scholarships from different funding agencies, including the Idea Wild, the Explorers Club, the Gesneriad Society, and the Graduate School at The University of Alabama. She was recently awarded the Joab Langston Thomas Scholarship.