Fausto Rodríguez Zapata is a 3rd year Ph.D. student in the NC State Genetics Program. His doctoral research in the Rellán Álvarez lab focuses on the local adaptation of corn and sorghum to low phosphorus soils using genome environment association and linkage mapping. He is from Colombia and previously worked on the genomics of other tropical crops like cassava, common bean, and Rice. Most recently, he received his Master’s degree in Universidad de Los Andes Bogotá, with a project on the variation of genome size in Colombian coca cultivars.