As a college freshman majoring in business, Kali Brandt called her parents to announce that she was switiching her major to biology.  "I was wondering when you were going to come to your senses," quipped her father, a zoologist.

The way she tells it, many of her classmates talked excitedly about their classes and their majors, but not her. A trip to the zoo, its savannah exhibit with zebras, provided the light bulb moment. Within a few years, the college grad was working as a research assistant in agricultural biotech. After three years, knowing that it would take 10–15 years to lead her own research study, she did the hardest thing she’d ever done: left job security, moved where she knew no one, and began her graduate studies at Oregon State University. She didn’t want to wait any longer.

“I just fell into wheat,” Kali said while pointing out that the crop is grown all over Oregon, and that different wheats can combine, hybridize and create new varieties that could benefit people everywhere. What energizes her is to combine old and new methods to literally fight world hunger.

Kali is effusive in her gratitude toward ARCS. “There are so many failures on the road to discovery in science. The ARCS award gives you the continued opportunity to try."  The motivation of ARCS members to bring great scientists to Oregon, to highlight science in Oregon, are sources of motivation to her.

“Crop science is not a flashy science, and yet there are lots of job and research opportunities in the field. ARCS, and my award, have brought visibility to the science and informed many people about an area that isn’t well known, and I’m grateful for that,” reflected Kali.

It was at an ARCS event that a still-new PhD crop science student was feeling unsure about her command of her subject matter. Someone asked her a question about technology in agriculture. Suddenly Kali was making connections and realized that she did, in fact, know what she was talking about, and that people had gathered around her to have a real conversation about her science.

Kali's sponsor's are Pat Reser and Aletha Anderson.