Melissa Cregger is a research scientist in the Biosciences Division at ORNL, specializing in plant-microbe interactions. Last year, she received a DOE Early Career Award to conduct research for the BER Genomic Sciences program. She was a Liane Russell Distinguished Fellow at ORNL from 2015-2018.
In addition to typical ECD activities, Cregger prepared CBI presentations for the DOE Genomic Sciences Annual Meeting. She also drafted the summary report for the FY20 DOE Performance Metrics. She is working with Dr. Rich Giannone at ORNL on a CBI project that was postponed due to COVID constraints.
“Interacting with CBI management gave me a broad understanding of how my work fits within the larger scope of the project,” Cregger said. “Helping draft the annual report, I now have a better grasp on the various research focuses within the project and what each contributing scientist is working on.
This experience highlighted all of the various plant and microbial resources CBI has produced and provided opportunities to leverage these unique resources.” Cregger said she also enjoyed pulling together the annual report and interacting with new researchers across the project outside her field of expertise.