by Katherine Lee
Robert Pal, Ph.D. Image by Alycia Holland.
The theme of this year’s AAAS Annual Meeting was “Understanding Dynamic Ecosystems,” which aimed to examine how science, engineering, and technology can help various biological, physical, social, and economic systems maintain balance and achieve improvements. Fittingly, one of the presenters was restoration ecologist and botanist Robert Pal, Ph.D., whose work involves identifying solutions for areas that have become unbalanced by invasive plants and finding ways to restore those ecosystems.
Like so many things these days, the AAAS Meeting was held online, and Pal, who is an associate professor and the director of restoration at Montana Technological University’s Department of Biological Sciences, notes that while there were some challenges and drawbacks to the new format, there were also some distinct upsides to the virtual knowledge-sharing, including sharing the virtual stage with colleagues from as fa