Nicole Labruto is a doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the interdisciplinary Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society. Her research investigates the intersections of plants, energy, agricultural practice, and science in the global South through long-term ethnographic engagement with sugarcane bioenergy scientists in Brazil. She conducted 18 months of participant observation research in Brazilian sugarcane laboratories to ask how 500 years of sugarcane cultivation in the New World influences the practices and ideologies that are shaping new “green” energy sources and technologies within plant life itself. Other research projects include studies of energy generated from human waste using biodigesters, gender and re-use value in Brazilian and US waste worker recycling spaces, and historical analyses of ecologically-oriented concepts and practices, such as lifecycles and lifecycles analysis. Labruto’s graduate research has been funded by the Social Science Research Council and the Fulbright Foundation, as well as MIT. She received an MA in Cultural Anthropology from the New School for Social Research and a BA in Anthropology and Philosophy from Mount Holyoke College.