Ko-Hsuan Chen

I’m a PhD student in François Lutzoni’s lab at Duke University, with a particular interest in the systematic and ecological questions in endophytic and endolichenic fungi. Since members of this fungal group are usually invisible in nature, a majority of them were just discovered recently. Thus, their phylogenetic and taxonomic relationships are largely unknown. I am currently using two newly developed genes to improve the resolution of phylogeny within this fungal group. My PhD project will be focusing on the taxonomic components of endophytic and endolichenic fungi from boreal biome. Both molecular and morphological data will be applied in my study to help with taxa delineation. I received my BA in Biology at National Taiwan Normal University in 2008. Subsequently, I worked on the taxonomy of a saprobic fungal family - Diatrypaceae in Taiwan as my Master thesis, and received my M.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at National Taiwan University in 2010.