Congratulations to Martha Sudermann for obtaining a competitive USDA NIFA postdoctoral fellowship. The overarching goal of this work is to understand pathogen emergence and processes that facilitate adaptation and host shift to western hemlock. She will focus on Phytophthora pluvialis, which is a pathogen on conifer species that are native to the PNW and threaten mixed-conifer wildland forests and plantations. Phytophthora pluvialis is a recalcitrant organism, and genomic approaches to characterize its populations will allow us to describe the genetic basis of adaptation of the pathogen to novel hosts.