My research asks a deceptively simple question: What makes plants and forests healthy? I study fungi, and sometimes other microbes, as partners in ecosystem resilience, integrating systematics, genomics, metabolomics, and community ecology. My work spans fungal biodiversity, the systematics of plant pathogens, and plant–microbe symbioses, and has recently expanded to examine how animal-mediated microbial dispersal relates to plant health. By connecting fundamental discovery with applications in agriculture (e.g., biological control) and conservation, my research seeks to better understand the ecological roles of microbes in plant-associated systems.