Robert is the principal investigator (PI) of the Calderon Lab. He holds a BS in Biology and a BA in Mathematics from IU (2008) and a Ph.D in Plant Biology from the University of California, Berkeley (2015). He was a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley/United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) from 2015 to 2019, including as a USDA NIFA-AFRI Postdoctoral Scholar from 2017 to 2019. From 2019 to 2023, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Umeå Plant Science Centre in Umeå, Sweden. He started the Calderon Lab at IU in 2024.
Outside of the lab, Robert enjoys hiking, cooking, music, editing/reading Wikipedia and spending time with his family & friends. He speaks a lot of French, a little Swedish and has unreasonably strong opinions about bagels.
You can follow him on Bluesky here.