Jennifer Schmidt is pursuing her Ph.D. with an emphasis on Agroecology in the Gaudin lab. She has a BA in Environmental Analysis, sustainable agriculture from Pomona College.  She is interested in rhizosphere processes as applied to sustainable agriculture. Complex interactions between plant roots and biotic as well as abiotic soil components have a tremendous, but often underappreciated, influence on the food we grow. Her work focuses on how domestication and breeding have affected the maize rhizosphere, particularly their effects on response to limited nutrient availability. A better understanding of changes that impact nutrient limitation response can be applied to low-input agricultural systems. More broadly, she is also interested in other areas of sustainable agriculture such as cover cropping, crop rotation systems, and soil nutrient cycling.