Discovery

"The focus of the company. It is the first company that I feel it is trying to revolutionize the way things are done in agriculture with minimal environmental consequences. I strongly believe in the core science and thought behind the business strategy. The people that work here are excellent too and that adds another level of excitment to my experience here."

"I work in the grow rooms at Indigo, so I spend a lot of time inside our Conviron growth chamber (the largest growth chamber built by Conviron). This tech enables us to precisely control temperature, humidity, and light conditions to create an ideal environment for growing plants. "

"Indigo has been an excellent space for me to innovate and constantly seeks feedback and ideas from its employees. As a part of our innovation exchange platform, for example, myself and other research associates proposed a better and more streamlined protocol and SOP pipeline for the company and received widespread support from our managers to take the lead and implement it. Additionally, all levels of the company are encouraged to bring ideas and discuss current data at bi-weekly brainstorm sessions and through weekly R&D meetings."

"I work with many other groups on cross functional projects. This involves meetings in which we design experiments, review data and determine next steps. "

"Definitely! We are constantly exploring ways to perform our analyses more efficiently. My mantra is "More, Better, Faster", with a focus on process bottlenecks. Right now, we are working collaboratively with Discovery on finding an alternative to CFU plating. We are looking at using the cytoflex flow cytometer to access SYM viability."

"My team and I use a variety of molecular biology tools to detect and characterize the microbial communities associated with Indigo target crops in a high throughput way. We analyze the DNA from plants and microbes with PCR, real-time PCR and Next Generation Sequencing. We apply ad hoc bioinformatics software for data analysis. "

"Indigo splits up the year into four quarters. Each quarter employees are prompted to draft a written version of their goals as outlined by their manager and the company as a whole. For example, you might say 50% of your time will be spent on one project, while 10% is spent on another etc... I have always been able to put 10-15% of my time towards a "professional development goal" each quarter. That could be learning a new skill or working with a different group on an exciting new project, my team has been very supportive of encouraging my professional interests."

"At Indigo, I do a lot of microbial preparation for grow room experiments, which means a lot of sterile work using autoclaved and sterile-filtered media to prepare the SYMs, which is done in the autoclave. I also frequently use the biosafety cabinets and pipettes to prepare and mix inoculum for seed treatment. "

"I am in charge of the Culture Collection and work closely with two Research Associates in growing and maintaining Indigo's microbial resources. We work closely with other divisions to supply quality microbes for all of our processes from high-throughput screening to commercial product launch."