Dalley Cutler
Biology senior Dalley Cutler's personal hero is Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish activist invited to the United Nations to advocate for reversing man-made climate change and who was subsequently named Time Magazine's Person of the Year. Along with this sixteen-year-old, and others like her, the Idaho Falls native wants to see sensible policies and actions based on scientific understanding.
The same is true of his own research in the Dentinger lab. “Many producers are either incorrectly identifying wild mushroom food products or are purposely lying about the species contained in those food products,” he says. “There are no international or national regulations to protect consumers from buying and eating poisonous wild mushrooms sold on the internet as edible wild mushrooms.” He uses metabarcoding genomic analysis techniques to identify species sold as wild mushrooms in food products.
“I generated the data for this poster some time ago,” he says, referring to the research poster he displayed at the School of Biological Sciences' annual Retreat in August 2019. “But due to other obligations like class attendance and work I was unable to invest the necessary time to learn how to process and accurately analyze that data.” A scholarship provided by alumni donor George R. Riser was a game-changer for him, providing time away from work obligations to write the appropriate scripts and install the right software that will streamline future projects.
The scholarship has also allowed him to begin generating and processing data for his next project.
Cutler who is graduating with his bachelor's in biology in April 2020 has high hopes to work in a field where he can use scientific techniques to better understand the natural world and to use that understanding to protect and conserve vulnerable ecosystems from the impacts of the climate and ecological crisis that will be occurring over the course of his life.
Inspired by an out-spoken girl in pig tails who was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2019, he is committed as a scientist to make a difference.
