Tian Gan 甘甜, Ph.D., is a post-doctoral fellow at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. Her doctoral degree in Mineralogy, Petrology, and Mineral Deposit Geology is from the Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on paleoenvironmental change and evolutionary innovations at the critical Cryogenian-Ediacaran transition. She integrates paleontological, geological, and geochemical data to answer when fungi colonized on land and to discover the ecological and environmental context of this evolutionary innovation.