Chodon defected from the east coast to earn her B.S. in biology from Pomona College in 1999. During her undergraduate career, Chodon spent a semester studying tropical ecology and consesrvation in Costa Rica, and has henceforth been hooked on plants, ecological associations, and conservation biology. After two years in Toyama, Japan as an English teacher, Chodon returned to the world of biology through her work with Genitope, a startup biotech company. Her return to academia and to plant biology is enabling her to focus on studying the interface between plants and their environment. Chodon is working on the bromeliad genus Aechmea to understand both species-level evolution in this group as well as population dynamics within widespread and narrow 'endemics' in a comparative context.
