Meet the Plant Science Team

Dr. Morgan Gostel is the John J. Willaman Director of Plant Science at the Morris Arboretum & Gardens of the University of Pennsylvania. His research in plant systematics emphasizes diversity and evolution of what he refers to as his botanical A, B, Cs namely three families of flowering plants including Araliaceae (ginseng and ivy), Burseraceae (frankincense and myrrh), and Compositae (daisies and sunflowers). His work has especially been focused in tropical Africa and Madagascar, but the plants in these families are distributed worldwide. Dr. Gostel is also a research associate in the Department of Botany at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and the Botanical Research Institute of Texas at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. Since 2015, he has led the Global Genome Initiative for Gardens (GGI-Gardens), an international partnership of botanic gardens dedicated to supporting the collection of genome-quality tissues from living collections and their preservation in biobanks to support genomics research.

Dr. Cynthia Skema is a botanical scientist at Morris and her research centers on the evolution, systematics, and conservation of flowering plants. She enjoys conducting research in the field, the herbarium, and the lab, and believes working in all three arenas is necessary to best understand the plants she studies. Dr. Skema specializes in the systematics of the cotton family (Malvaceae sensu lato), especially the Dombeyoideae, and co-coordinates the Malvaceae Taxonomic Expert Network for the World Flora Online. She is also interested in the digitization and dissemination of herbarium data and coordinates the Mid-Atlantic Herbaria Consortium. Her other research interest is the evolution of separate sexes in angiosperms and she has a soft spot for the floras of Pennsylvania, Madagascar, and New Zealand.

Dr. Korsak is the plant science technician for Morris Arboretum & Gardens. Dr. Korsak’s first professional life was in basic biomedical research, studying olfaction in mammals. During the pandemic she decided that her research topics did not justify the environmental cost of all the single-use plastic involved in research. She joined the Morris in 2022 to apply her skills toward more environment-forward initiatives.

Pam is the plant records and living collections manager at Morris. With an Environmental Science/Biology degree, she started in 2001 as the natural areas manager. In 2010, she transitioned to be curatorial assistant and in 2022 became responsible for managing plant records and the living collection. More recently, Pam was responsible for launching our new Garden Explorer to connect people with our collection via a mobile device.

Avery is the John J. Willaman & Martha Haas Valentine Curatorial Assistant and studied environmental science and sustainability as an undergraduate. Her professional experience has mainly pertained to botanical gardens, where she has worked in woody plant nurseries and as an outdoor display horticulturist.