Frank Schaeffer
Name: Frank Schaeffer
Hometown: Columbia, PA 
Anticipated graduation: May 2026
Major(s): Biology, Plant Sciences
Internships/Research/Projects:
Millersville MUSE and Departmental Thesis: Sex-dependent Microbiome Assembly in Dioecious Spinach (Spinacia oleracea)
- Together with Drs. Klosinska, Stieha, and Ramos-Sepulveda, I am using bioinformatic softwares in R and Python to determine if there are statistical differences between the microbial communities that inhabit male and female spinach plants at different life cycle stages.
- I worked in the Kleiner lab with Dr. Gaurav Pal and Rayna Garcia for ten weeks, isolating and characterizing maize seed-inhabiting microorganisms called seed endophytes.
Inspirations (for major, research, internship):
Plants are practically everywhere, yet it wasn't until taking Concepts of Biology at MU that I realized how fascinating their lives are. The majority of plants we interact with are immobile, soil-dwelling organisms which lack most of the biological features we are familiar with, such as nervous systems and a diplontic life cycle. Instead, plants synthesize and detect a smorgasbord of chemical vapors to interact with their environment, and have an alternationg life cycle in which they spend time developing in both diploid and haploid phases - that's like if human sex cells grew up and did things before fertilization! I am currently most interested in how plants have evolved to interact with microorganisms, and the genetic components that govern these interactions.
Highlights (from courses/internship/research):
My most memorable experience at MU was cultivating spinach plants for research with Dr. Klosinska. We planted roughly 1,500 seeds in the Millersville Community Garden plots, but had no water at the site for the first couple of months. So, we filled 20 gallon carboys with water and drove them to the field almost every day for 1-2 months. Getting the water to the plants throughout the semester became lika a morning ritual. Our hard work paid off, and the plants reached sizes beyond what we expected, with some of the leaves reaching a foot in length.
Takeaway (from courses/internship/research):
Writing assignments, research, and creative activities are opportunities to discover all sorts of fascinating perspectives about the world. I learned about topics I would not have encountered in lecture material while working on class writing assignments and grant proposals. Investing the time to deeply explore different academic topics is fun, and has helped me to appreciate the world even more.
Advice for incoming freshmen in your shoes:
Think about your specific career goals, ask professors for advice to achieve your goals, and strongly consider their advice.
Aspirations (upon graduation):
I would like to travel across Canada and the western United States before I begin graduate studies. I plan to earn a PhD studying plant-organismal interactions, and continue pursuing research as a professor at a university. I hope that I will someday be able to help people who are waiting to pursue their careers in academia to get started and succeed.
What has been the most significant and/or exciting aspect of your work?
The most exciting aspect of my work is analyzing data. I enjoy thinking about alternate hypotheses and different ways to test them. I am currently working to analyze microbiome metabarcode sequence data for my undergraduate departmental thesis. Learning about other researchers' approaches to analyzing this type of data has been fascinating.
Scholarships awarded while attending Millersville University
- Dr. Benjamin J. DelTito '77 and Anna DeBlois DelTito Scholarship
- Millersville University Mentored Undergradulate Scholar Experience (MUSE) Fellowship
- The Alex Henderson Scholarship in Biology Endowment
- NSF S-STEM Scholarship Program (DUE-2130177)
- NSF-REU: Integrative Plant and Microbial Systems at North Carolina University (DBI-2150167)
- Planet Bee Foundation Sustainable Honey Path Mentorship Program