I am currently a postdoctoral researcher in plant ecophysiology and ecology at Texas Tech University, passionate about understanding the mechanisms that drive plant responses to environmental change. My work explores how plants solve their existential challenges—survival and growth—in a silent, sessile world filled with competition, limited resources, disturbances, and extreme events (much like us, humans!). 

Between 2012 and 2022, I taught a range of plant biology and ecology courses at Saint Joseph University of Beirut and the Lebanese University–Faculty of Sciences. Before my teaching career, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Paris-Sud University–CNRS in France, and I earned my PhD in 2006 from INRAE–Bordeaux, also in France. 

What fascinates me is how plants respond to challenges through what we call “plant strategies”—specific combinations of traits that plants adopt and evolve to thrive in particular environments. These strategies are environment-specific; there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Plants are subtle and complex organisms, and they must respond to adversity in smart, adaptive ways. Every strategy involves trade-offs—because nothing is perfect, and every decision comes with costs and benefits. I study these strategies to understand how plants will adapt to future environmental change. 

Take drought, for example. To avoid dehydration and hydraulic failure, plants close the tiny pores on their leaves (called stomata—from the Greek word for “mouth”) to conserve water. But closing their mouths also blocks carbon dioxide from entering, halting photosynthesis. So what now—die of thirst or starve? Fortunately, plants are more resourceful than that. They balance this trade-off by boosting their photosynthetic capacity to compensate for stomatal closure. 

I study these kinds of strategic adaptations—how plants optimize gains versus costs in ever-changing environments, and how these responses affect population fitness and community structure. I’m particularly interested in how these strategies respond to atmospheric and soil dryness, in interaction with soil nutrients and microbial communities. Ultimately, as an ecologist, my goal is to understand how plant strategies scale up to shape ecosystem functioning and stability.