Dr. Joseph Taylor is currently a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Plant Regeneration at North Carolina State University. During his doctoral research, Dr. Taylor applied protein engineering to investigate how auxin, a key plant growth hormone, regulates countless aspects of plant development. Using Arabidopsis protoplasts, he tested modified versions of native auxin signaling proteins to explore their functional diversity influences distinct developmental responses.
Ph.D. Thesis: Decoding the Transcriptional Specificity of Auxin Signaling: A Synthetic Biology Approach
Dr. Sukhmanpreet Kaur is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Kaur's research investigated resistance mechanisms in carrot (Daucus spp.) against two major obligate parasites: the root parasite Phelipanche aegyptiaca and the shoot parasite Cuscuta gronovii.
Ph.D. Thesis: Exploring host-parasitic plant interactions by examining mechanisms of resistance
Dr. Xiaoying Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Horticulture Sciences at the University of Florida. Her research and extension programs are geared primarily towards the introduction and promotion of alternative vegetable crops and cropping systems in particularly ethnic and organic vegetable production.
Ph.D. Thesis: Improving Vegetable Soybean Production Through Investigating the Impact of Genotype and Environmental Factors on Germination and Emergence
Dr. John Bryant joined the Kellogg Lab at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in June 2024. His goal is to develop new genome engineering tools capable of resolving complex genetic diseases. Dr. Bryant uses synthetic biology approaches to engineer mobile genetic elements and leverage them as genome engineering tools.
Ph.D. Thesis: Synthetic Auxin Engineering: Building a Biofoundry Platform
Dr. Parul Sharma is currently working as a Bioinformatics Scientist at Emory University in Dr. Timothy Read's lab. Her research focuses on unraveling how pathogens evolve, spread, and devlop antibiotic resistance in complex biological environments using genomics and metagenomics sequencing data.
Ph.D. Thesis: Bacterial Plant Pathogen Identification using Genomics and Metagenomics
In January 2023, Dr. Naveen Kumar joined the Cereal Pathology, Genetics & Breeding Lab at the University of British Columbia as a post-doctoral scientist, where he applies his expertise to studying the genetics of spikelet development and floret fertility in wheat.
Ph.D. Research: Development of drought-tolerant peanut
