Cecilia Zumajo

I am Cecilia Zumajo-Cardona, an early career plant biologist and Assistant Curator in the Laboratory for Integrative Biodiversity Research at the New York Botanical Garden. I grew up in Colombia, a tropical country surrounded by an extraordinary diversity of plants and animals, and that early curiosity about how so many different forms of life came to be has guided my career ever since.

I earned my Ph.D. at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, in partnership with the New York Botanical Garden, and later did postdoctoral research on the genetic mechanisms behind reproductive barriers in Arabidopsis thaliana. Today my research sits at the intersection of evolutionary developmental biology (“evo-devo”) and plant genomics. I am especially interested in the origin and evolution of the seed, and in the molecular mechanisms that build reproductive structures in plants with unusual forms.

To answer these questions, I study overlooked lineages that hold key positions in plant evolution, such as poppies (Papaveraceae) and gymnosperms, including Ginkgo, cycads and Ephedra. I combine classic botany with molecular biology, genomics and bioinformatics, an integrative approach that lets me connect what a plant looks like with the genes that shape it.

I study these plants because they keep revealing new ways to build a seed, and because they can show us how ancient lineages have thrived for hundreds of millions of years.

October 2026