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Meet our Principal Investigators

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Faculty Labs

TPSC affiliated faculty represent 3 colleges and 6 academic departments on campus.

Our growing community collaborates in unique ways to support sustainable production of food, feed, and biomaterial issues by improving yield, disease resistance, adaptation to a changing environment, plant metabolism, and metabolic engineering. 

Together we teach the next generation of plant scientists, engage stakeholders, and facilitate cutting edge science to sustain and improve agricultural productivity.

 

 

Brian Badgley

Areas of Research

  • Environmental Microbiology
  • Water and Soil Quality
Bastiaan Bargmann

Areas of Research

Fundamental and translational studies towards crop improvement through genome-editing and tissue-culture

Jacob Barney

Areas of Research

Invasive plant ecology, biofuel ecology, allelopathy, risk assessment, weed science

Amy Brunner

Areas of Research

Genomics of tree development, ecophysiology and adaptation; molecular genetics of tree maturation, flowering and crown architecture; epigenetic mechanisms and small RNAs in trees; long-distance signaling in trees.

Eva Collakova

Areas of Research

Regulation of metabolism during seed filling and seed metabolic engineering, multi-omics approaches, plant metabolic engineering

David Haak

Areas of Research

  • Evolutionary ecological genomics
  • Genetics in plant defense and physiology
Amy Brunner

Areas of Research

Population and evolutionary genomics, genome-enabled breeding, evolutionary ecology

John Jelesko

Areas of Research

  • Plant specialized metabolism
  • Poison ivy urushiol metabolism and chemical ecology
Leisner Lab

Areas of Research

  • Abiotic Stress
  • Plant Physiology
  • Plant Molecular Biology
  • Plant Genomics and Bioinformatics
  • Plant Specialized Metabolism
Song Li lab field work

Areas of Research

  • Plant genomics and bioinformatics
  • Machine learning
  • High throughput phenotyping
Marta Lima

Areas of Research

  • Phytochemical content of fruits and legumes
  • Increasing iron bioavailability of legume grains
John McDowell

Areas of Research

  • Plant-pathogen interactions
Gota Morota

Areas of Research

Dr. Morota investigates the genome–phenome relationship using statistical and quantitative genetics and its application to plant breeding.

Dr. Pilot teaching

Areas of Research

  • Regulation of amino acid transport and metabolism in Arabidopsis
  • Determinants of seed protein content in soybean
Saghai Maroof

Areas of Research

  • Genomics
  • Crop Improvement
Dr. Posados with class

Areas of Research

  • SmartFarm Innovation Network™ : SmartTechnologies for Crop and the Green Industries
  • Data Analytics, Decisions, and Machine Learning for Food, Agriculture, Communities, and Health Systems
  • Precision agriculture technologies
Nicholas Santantonio

Areas of Research

  • small grains breeding program aims to produce superior wheat and barley varieties for eastern North America
  • integrating the latest genotyping and phenotyping technologies to accelerate genetic improvement for new and changing environments
  • quantitative genetics theory
scharf_lab

Birgit Scharf

Professor of Biological Sciences

Department of Biological Sciences

Areas of Research

Bacterial motility and chemotaxis; sensing of environmental signals, two-component signal transduction, the speed-variable flagellar motor, flagellotropic phage infection, function of type IV pili in symbiosis, tumor-targeting Salmonella

David Schmale

Areas of Research

  • Airborne plant pathogens and ice-nucleating microbes; mycotoxins
Sherif Sherif

Areas of Research

  • Investigation of strategies to avoid or reduce frost damage in apple and peach
  • Evaluation of strategies to enhance tree yield and annual bearing in apple
  • Evaluation of apple varieties, rootstocks and high-density training systems
  • Evaluation of strategies to improve apple fruit quality and extend shelf-life of peaches and cherries
  • Examining the efficacy of non-chemical methods for controlling major disease of apple and peach
Tholl Lab group photo

Dorothea Tholl

Professor of Biological Sciences

Department of Biological Sciences

Areas of Research

  • Biology
  • Functional Genomics
  • Biochemistry of Chemical Communication
James Tokuhisa

Jim Tokuhisa

Assistant Professor of Practice, Biological Sciences

Department of Biological Sciences

Areas of Research

  • Biochemical and molecular mechanisms of chemical defense fitness in higher plants
Boris Vinatzer lab

Areas of Research

  • Genome-based classification and identification of plant pathogens and biocontrol agents
  • Biological ice nucleation activity
Xiaofeng Wang

Areas of Research

  • Viral replication mechanisms and virus-host interactions of positive-strand RNA viruses
Jonathan Watkinson

Areas of Research

Jim Westwood

Areas of Research

  • Parasitic plants
  • Plant communication
  • Weed evolution
Susan Whitehead

Susan Whitehead

Associate Professor of Biological Sciences

Department of Biological Sciences

Plant evolutionary responses to multi-species interactions; chemical ecology of seed dispersal and fruit defense; domestication and plant defense; agricultural applications of chemical ecology

Mark Williams

Areas of Research

  • Microbial ecology
  • Plant growth promotion
  • Rhizobium spp.
  • Mycorrhizae 
  • Land management
  • Natural ecosystems
Brenda S. J. Winkel

Brenda S.J. Winkel

Professor of Biological Sciences

Department of Biological Sciences

Areas of Research

Characterization of the architecture and localization of the Arabidopsis flavonoid enzyme complex using a variety of molecular, biochemical, and cell biological techniques

Clay Wright

Areas of Research

Plant development, hormone signaling, genetic engineering of yield/resistance/added-value crop traits, genetic variation, protein engineering, biosensors, directed evolution, and synthetic biology

Yun Yin

Yun Yin

Assistant Professor

Food Science and Technology

Areas of Research

  • Identification of aroma and flavor compounds in food systems
  • Characterization of aroma/flavor formation pathways
  • Convenient synthesis of highly unstable odorants
  • Applying novel engineering solutions to existing difficulties in flavor manufacturing
Yuan Zeng

Areas of Research

  • Plant Pathology
  • Host-microbe interactions
  • Data science
Bo Zhang

Areas of Research

  • Soybean breeding
  • Crop genetics
Bingyu Zhao

Areas of Research

  • Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions
  • Plant Biotechnology
  • Controlled-Environment Agriculture

Contact our Program Coordinator or faculty to inquire about studying with our program!