Navigation
Charlie Thompson
I'm Charlie Thompson. I'm working on my Masters. I currently have a fellowship with Monsanto. You see those graphs with population increase and the decrease in arable land; well that's where we come in. It's up to us to make up that difference. Monsanto has expressed interest in getting me more acquainted with the company or more acquainted with the private side of industry. Also another advantage of having a fellowship through Monsanto or another company is the opportunity to actually use their resources for your research. I'm actually a third generation graduate of University of Illinois. Both my parents and my grandfather graduated from here. So that's kind of neat. I grew up on a farm, so I had that agriculture background. I actually went to junior college for two years. I knew I was going to apply to the U of I but at the time I wasn't sure whether I was going to go into just general biology, integrated biology. But then I was just looking though and saw the opportunities of crop sciences. The good thing about our program is we get a very broad experience of not only field experience, but lab and greenhouse. After I complete my Masters, I will most likely continue on with my PhD. From there, I guess I have a road that splits, and I got to decide after I get my PhD, whether I want to go into academics or continue on and pursue a career in private industry.