Ignacio Falcón-Dvorsky

Ignacio, originally from a town in the outskirts of the Caribbean National forest, arrived to Oregon after completing his BA in Physical Geography at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras campus. During that time, he transformed his passion of plant life into an academic degree targeted towards these interests, including the opportunity to participate in various research projects related to these themes. As an exit experience of the degree, he designed a project to study factors of coffee production decline on the Island. He spent 7 months traveling to the Central Mountain range visiting coffee plantations, researching crop growth conditions and carrying out surveys of local coffee producers to evaluate if weather conditions were a main factor in coffee production decline. They were not.

Upon arriving in the PNW, Ignacio had the opportunity to explore the impact of the region's grapevine growth during a brief stint in a local winery.​ ​​A volunteer experience ​last summer (2016) ​helping Douglas Thalacker​ on his masters' thesis research at Mt St Helen's ​did the trick for him, and now​ he ​is definitely looking forward to pursuing his research interests in ecology and plant physiology ​at the ​GEC lab while conducting his thesis at ​Mt. St Helen's. In his down time, he enjoys listening to music and spending time outdoors with friends