Matthew Rudland | Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies

Matthew Rudland

Profile of graduate student Matthew Rudland (MSc, Environmental Sciences) in the atrium of Mac Donald Stewart Hall at the University of Guelph

2020 MSc Environmental Sciences

How Will Your Research Improve Life?

My research dealt with using biostimulants as environmentally friendly alternatives to fungicides, for preventing dollar spot disease, which is one of the most prevalent disease that affects turfgrass on golf courses worldwide. My research will hopefully help to identify species and cultivars of turfgrass that respond positively to various biostimulant applications and therefore have a lower disease incidence. This will potentially allow golf course managers to use fewer fungicides in the future by switching to biostimulant applications, which will reduce the environmental impact that they have on the surrounding ecosystems.

Program

Environmental Sciences, MSc

About My Advisor… 

I first met my advisor, Dr. Tom Hsiang, in the third year of my undergraduate studies when I took his Forest Health and Disease class. This course spiked an interest in plant pathology for me and after speaking with him, he encouraged me to first volunteer and then work in his lab as a research assistant in order to obtain hands on experience in a laboratory setting that involved working with plant pathogens. I enjoyed working in Dr. Hsiang's lab as he created a very positive work environment and provided me with both indoor and outdoor work which suited my interests. In addition, Dr. Hsiang did a great job at pushing his students to always complete their work to the best of their abilities, while simultaneously ensuring that they had the necessary guidance and skills to complete the tasks he asked of them. Also, since he had a large number of students and assistants working in his lab, he made an effort to allow everyone to get to know one another by having lab gatherings with food every month or so and encouraged us to help each other out with our work. Each week, all of his students and assistants were required to complete a weekly report that highlighted all of the tasks you completed that week and what you planned on doing in the near future. He returned the report with detailed feedback and gave us the opportunity to meet with him to go over it in more detail at the start of each week so we could ask questions about his comments. One of the greatest benefits of having Dr. Hsiang as an advisor was that he continued to give feedback even while on vacation or doing research overseas and would arrange Skype meetings to go over the reports when he was away. Overall, he was huge factor in encouraging me to go forward with graduate studies and continued to make me happy with the decision to do so.