I’m an ecophysiologist with a particular interest in the ways plants respond to their light environment. Much of my research concerns the dual role of light as both an essential resource and a potential stressor for plants. Most recently, I’ve been curious about light as a factor that influences the timing and pattern of leaf senescence in deciduous trees.

I also think about light as a tool to understand other aspects of plant function. Much of my research aims to describe and interpret the range of functional variation in plant reflectance spectra, which could help researchers monitor plant communities from space.

I’ll be setting up a lab in the Department of Renewable Resources at University of Alberta in September 2024. Since September 2022, I’ve been a postdoctoral researcher in Alain Paquette’s lab at Université du Québec à Montréal. From August 2020 to August 2022, I was a postdoctoral researcher in Etienne Laliberté’s lab at Université de Montréal as part of the Canadian Airborne Biodiversity Observatory. Before that, I did my PhD in the Cavender-Bares Lab at University of Minnesota.

Follow me on Twitter, and please feel free to reach out at shan.kothari@umontreal.ca!