Alum of the Month

Alum of the Month for December, 2023

RASYIDAH RAZAR

Rasyidah is from Malaysia and has joined the IPBGG in May 2015. She graduated in May 2020 with a PhD in Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics. She is currently working as a senior researcher in Malaysian Rubber Board. She is evaluating potential rubber clones in multi-location clones’ trial to search for new cultivars that are high yielding and have stable performance, for recommendation of planting in the country. As rubber clones in Malaysia are developed using the taxpayer money, the cultivar is known as a common variety, which can be used freely by people.

Rasyidah is a second born in the family and has interest in plants since young. Realizing that her true interest is in plants, she has changed her path from medicine to plant sciences. Working in a research institute also change her mindset that there are various ways on how she can contribute to society in general, be it through education for people outside the institute, transfer of technologies to smallholders, building up knowledge in your subordinates, helping your colleagues in various tasks and as a rubber breeder, breeding for high latex and accessible cultivars for everyone.

She has learned so much about plant breeding and sciences during her PhD program in IPBGG. The 5 years program has introduced her to wide range of cultivated plants that are so fascinating. She has worked with switchgrass under the guidance of Dr. Ali Missaoui and Dr. Katrien Devos to identify QTLs that are responsible for winter dormancy, flowering, spring emergence, biomass weight and some of the biomass quality traits. She has gained valuable skills and knowledge from her research, from basic skills of doing DNA extraction, up to a more complicated skill that is sequence analyses. Rasyidah is looking forward to learning new techniques in plant genetics and hope to have more opportunity in the future to do that.

Alum of the Month for October, 2023

JENNIFER YATES

Jennifer Yates is a proud Double Dawg with UGA degrees in Genetics (B.S.) and Agronomy (PhD), along with a M.S. in Plant Biology from UC Davis. However, her journey in agriculture and genetics started much earlier, with both parents growing up on cattle and cotton farms in the Southeast, and a love for genetics that started with learning about the Punnett square in the 7^th grade. Jennifer herself grew up as an Army “brat”, enjoying the experiences of living in 4 U.S. states and 2 European countries until her father retired in Alabama when Jennifer was in high school.

Jennifer specifically applied to the University of Georgia because of its degree offering in genetics.  Before moving to Athens, she worked at a local DNA marker company called Research Genetics.  This summer experience was a factor in her being selected for a student worker position the winter of 1995 in the soybean genetics lab of Dr. Wayne Parrott. Jennifer worked in Dr. Parrott’s lab until she graduated from UGA. It cannot be overstated the benefit of Dr. Parrott’s mentorship and guidance in the subsequent three decades of Jennifer’s career.

Jennifer applied to graduate schools intending to work on transgene introduction into crops. Once at UC Davis, however, a plant breeding course shifted her interest specifically to the application of quantitative genetics in agriculture. Here Dr. Parrott again assisted, introducing her to Dr. Roger Boerma, a soybean breeder at the University of Georgia. After graduating with her M.S. degree, she moved back to Georgia to become a technician in Dr. Boerma’s lab, and began her PhD program the following year. The four years she spent in Dr. Boerma’s (now Dr. Zenglu Li’s) esteemed breeding program laid a foundation and network for a career in plant breeding that Jennifer continues today.

In 2006, Jennifer joined Monsanto, now Bayer, as a soybean breeder in Maryland. She is an inventor or co-inventor on 80+ soybean variety patents, and a co-developer either of the variety or its parent that led to two separate world soybean yield records in Georgia in the past decade. Jennifer moved to Missouri to lead the soybean plant health group in 2011, and for the past 8 years has been leading the development of wheat germplasm for the Plains and Pacific Northwest. In 2022, she relocated to Oregon.

Jennifer actively mentors young scientists, and has served twice as a mentor in the University of Georgia mentoring program. Jennifer loves giving back to the university and its faculty that have given her the support and confidence to pursue a career she loves in plant breeding. 

Alum of the Month for August, 2023

MARIA J. MONTEROS

Maria grew up in Guatemala, doing gymnastics, hiking and riding bikes through the countryside, witnessing the challenges and ingenuity of smallholder farmers.  Maria enjoyed learning how things worked and growing plants in her family garden.

Maria obtained her BS and Licenciate (similar to a Master’s) degrees in Biochemistry from Universidad del Valle de Guatemala. While working on her undergraduate degrees, Maria came to UGA for multiple internships, including one supported by an agricultural exchange program. At that time, she worked on developing resistance to papaya ringspot virus and molecular methods to detect viruses in citrus species that was part of her undergraduate thesis.  She then came back to Athens to work on understanding herbicide translocation in weeds and virus resistance in soybean.

Maria loved the experiences and time she spent at UGA and enrolled as a Master’s student in Dr. Roger Boerma’s lab.  She then transferred to a PhD track leveraging her biochemistry background to identify the genetic determinants of soybean fatty acid oil composition.  Maria worked on a field project to identify slow wilting genotypes to deliver drought tolerant soybean varieties. She also received a grant from the Tinker Foundation to travel to Brazil and identify Asian soybean rust resistance.

After completing her PhD in 2006, Maria led the forage legume breeding and genomics team at the Noble Foundation as an Assistant Professor, Associate and Full Professor.  During her time at Noble, she hosted students in her lab, developed genomics resources, high throughput phenotyping and new approaches to characterize and develop new varieties to enable sustainable solutions in forage production. Maria was part of the team who generated the pecan pangenome and identified resistance mechanisms to pecan scab. She also served on multiple Editorial Boards and review panels for NSF and USDA.

Maria joined Bayer Crop Science in 2020 as the Lead for the North, within the North America Hybrid team working to deliver corn and canola varieties.  She is currently the southern lead for the North America Varietal team, focused on designing and delivering new soybean and cotton varieties that deliver performance and breakthrough solutions to growers’ challenges.

Maria is grateful for the skills, knowledge, experiences and the people she met at UGA, including great mentors and friends from all over the world.  Maria is passionate about innovation, delivering ‘lab to field’ pipelines, encouraging the next generation of scientists and problem solvers, and supporting women in STEM fields. 

Alum of the Month for June, 2023

WALID KORANI

Walid Korani has been a computational biologist (Senior Scientist) for HudsonAlpha, Alabama, since 2020. He started his career as a Demonstrator and then an Associate Lecturer at Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority. During this time, he finished his Master's degree and part of a Ph.D. in Genetics, and he was handling a mutation breeding program for Peanut. 

Then he moved to the University of Georgia (UGA), USA, in 2011. At UGA, he worked as a research scholar, got my Ph.D. in Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Genomics, then a postdoc (funded by USDA) in Computational Biology from 2011-2019. During this time, he combined his knowledge of Genetics with his skills in programming, which started as a hobby while studying in the undergraduate program, then expanded to learn many programming languages, e.g., C++, Fortran, and scripting languages, e.g., bash, R. These resulted in developing of a bunch of computational tools during this period such as SNP-ML, a C++/python SNP caller in complex genomes, keggseq, an R package for carrying out Enrichment analysis, Crossword, an R package for a wide scale breeding simulation in plants and animals. 

In 2019, he moved to Texas to work as a bioinformatician for a cow breeding company for almost a year before joining HudsonAlpha. Currently, he develops platforms for maximizing utilizing sequencing of short or long reads for a wide range of implementations. 

Alum of the Month for April, 2023

ALEXANDRA OSTEZAN

Alexandra Ostezan is from Lake Orion, Michigan. Growing up in metro Detroit, her first experience with agriculture was visiting her uncle’s farm in Romania. The beauty of the fields of corn was enough to set her focus on corn from an early age. After learning about genetics as she progressed through school, Alexandra knew she wanted to work with plant genetics. Upon graduating high school, she attended the University of Illinois, majoring in Crop Sciences with a Plant Biotechnology and Molecular Biology concentration. During her undergraduate years, Alexandra gained experience with corn lab and field work from Drs. Martin Bohn and Jack Juvik. She also had two summer internships with Dow AgroSciences as a corn breeding intern and corn pathology intern in Sidney, IL which solidified her dream to be a corn breeder in the industry.

Alexandra started her PhD at IPBGG at the University of Georgia following her graduation from the University of Illinois. She was in Dr. Zenglu Li’s lab, working on soybean cyst nematode resistance, the characterization of a soybean seed composition mutant, and the development of a high throughput imaging system for quantifying soybean cyst nematode resistance. Alexandra is very grateful to Dr. Li for his extensive training both in and out of the field and credits him for her preparation for her current role. She enjoyed the community of IPBGG, including all of the faculty, staff, and other graduate students, and has fond memories of her time at UGA.

After graduating with her PhD in the summer of 2022, Alexandra became a corn breeder for Corteva Agriscience in Garden City, KS. She is running a 108 RM corn breeding program with focuses including drought tolerance, and contributes to breeding efforts for the mid-western U.S. region.

Alum of the Month for January, 2023

YASIN TOPCU

Yasin Topcu was born in the city of Isparta, Turkey that makes up approximately 65 percent of the world's rose oil production. During his early years in his life, he helped his father in cherry orchard and rose garden. Hence, he was exposed to agriculture at a young age. That’s why he wanted to pursue a degree in agriculture.

In accordance with, he received both Bachelor of Science (2012) and Master of Science (2015) degrees in Horticulture from Akdeniz University, Antalya/Turkey. During one of his summer internships, he spent two months in Israel, and he experienced characteristics of Kibbutz life. Additionally, he received two fellowships and one travel grant from European cooperation in science & Technology. Thanks to these fellowships, he worked with two projects entitled “The Effects of Ozone and Different Packaging Systems on Postharvest Quality of 0900 Ziraat Cherries for Increasing Cherry Export” and “The Effects of Different UV-B Illuminations on Plant Growth, Nutrient Content and Postharvest Quality of Broccoli”. In 2014, he attended a training school in Helsinki, Finland. In the summer of 2016, Yasin was awarded a Ph.D. Scholarship funded by the Turkish Government to pursue a Ph.D. degree in the field of “Vegetable Breeding”.

Before he joined the Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Genomics at the University of Georgia in 2017, Yasin had spent 6 months in Tuscaloosa for his intensive English classes. Upon joining Dr. Esther van der Knaap’s lab, Yasin characterized the molecular and genetic basis of Blossom-End Rot and chlorophyll content in tomato. Yasin was the recipient of John Ingle Innovation in Plant Breeding Award in 2019. For these works, he obtained his Ph.D. from the Institute in 2021. After completing his doctoral degree in 2021, Yasin is continuing and expanding his research in the same lab as a postdoctoral Research Associate. In addition to his studies, Yasin was the president of Turkish Student Association here at UGA between 2019 and 2022.

For future career, Yasin is planning to go back to Turkey and bring his IPBGG-developed skills to breed healthier, tastier, and high yielding tomatoes. Yasin is very grateful to each member of big IPBGG family for the knowledge, skills, and experiences that he got.

Alum of the Month for November, 2022

YUJI KE

Yuji Ke, was born in the city of Jingdezhen and spent most of his schooldays in the city of Jiujiang, Jiangxi, China. He also spent quite much of his summertime in rural Jiangxi, which led him to be intimate with nature and curious about all living creatures, including plants.

Yuji obtained his bachelor degree of agronomy from China Agricultural University in 2014. Upon graduation, he went on to pursue his Ph.D. at the Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics at the University of Georgia in fall 2014 under the direction of Dr.Peggy Ozias-Akins. His Ph.D. dissertation was mainly about discovering apomixis/parthenogenesis genes by comparing transcriptomes of apomictic and sexual egg cells collected through laser-capture microdissection, which is part of an international collaborative project named as “Capturing Heterosis” funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Six public research institutes and one private comercial company around the world are research partners under this collaboration. This experience broadened his vision of international collaboration and gained him the interest in expanding his knowledge and expertise on single cell genomics and spatial transcriptomics. Yuji was the recipient of a Ph.D. Scholar of Excellence Assistantship during his studies.

After completing his Ph.D. in 2019, Yuji joined BGI genomics Inc, Shenzhen, China as a single cell genomics research associate. The role in this position gained him valuable connections in both science and business field, which inspired him what to explore next. Carrying along what he has learned from both academia and industry, he resumed his aspiration of applying these cutting-edge technologies on plant breeding field. This led him to join Dr.Bert De Rybel’s lab in PSB-VIB (Plant System Biology-Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie), Belgium, as a postdoctoral scientist working on a Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship (VLAIO) project in collaboration with BASF. Throughout this ongoing project, he enjoys very much the mixed exposure to the basic and applied research, diverse and creative collaboration with BASF and IRC-VIB (Inflammation Research Center-Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie), as well as continued relationships with BGI on stereo-seq (spatial transcriptomics) and the University of Georgia with Bob Schmitz on scATAC-seq.

Yuji appreciates so much the kindness, friendships and visions he received at the Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics, UGA. With that in mind, he will continue exploring and embracing what has to offer in the future.

Alum of the Month for September, 2022

BRIAN NADON

Brian Nadon, originally from Phoenix, AZ, received his B.S. in Genetics, Cell, and Developmental biology in 2013 from Arizona State University. His interest in plant genetics and breeding began with his work for the USDA in Maricopa, AZ at the Arid Lands Agricultural Research Center during his undergraduate studies, where he worked on projects involving high-throughput phenotyping in cotton and developing new methods for DNA extraction in cotton seed.

He joined the Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Genomics at the University of Georgia in fall 2014 under the mentorship of Dr. Scott A. Jackson. His Ph.D. research focused on the evolution of gene and genome duplication among legumes, and especially soybean. This work included investigations of genome fractionation in soybean, gene birth-death rates among legumes, and the development of a novel algorithm for reconstructing and phasing ancient paleotetraploid genomes. Brian was the recipient of a Presidential Graduate Fellowship during his studies.

After completing his doctoral degree in the spring of 2019, Brian began a postodoctoral Research Associate position with the USDA-ARS in the Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Unit in Athens, GA and later Washington, DC. His work in this capacity was primarily focused on creating a software tool for the identification of candidate genes in plants using a holistic in silico approach, which incorporated AI-enabled natural language processing, expression data, and mapping results. Other work in this position included the construction of a variation graph and toolkit to enable genotyping of Salmonella isolates from patient samples, the characterization of a novel Aspergillus flavus genome, and the support of the SCINet scientific computing network for the ARS.

After concluding his work with the USDA in late 2021, Brian took an exciting opportunity to expand his horizons when he started his current position as a Bioinformatics Software Engineer with Thermo Fisher Scientific in the Transplant Diagnostics division. In this role, he supports a wide range of products that enable testing for organ transplant compatibility and transplant monitoring. The work he performs in this role has been an enlightening opportunity to gain new knowledge about the human genome, medicine, and immunology while offering his own unique insights stemming from his background in plant genomics. Some highlights of his current role include developing new graph-based bioinformatic methods for typing the Human Leukoctye Antigen locus (HLA), supporting the development of new products that can discern different HLA epitopes, taking stewardship of a critical Next-Generation Sequencing software pipeline, and developing key desktop and web applications that enable more efficient research and development work.

Alum of the Month for July, 2022

RAEGAN HOLTON

Raegan Holton joined the Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics at The University of Georgia as a graduate student in 2018 under the direction of Dr. Peggy Ozias-Akins. She completed her master’s degree in the summer of 2021. Her research focused on examining different peanut genotypes for resistance to aflatoxin contamination as well as examining reproductive traits in peanuts that contribute to yield, size/ shape, and maturity. 

Although this research is ongoing, its implications will have far reaching effects on the peanut industry as a whole by increasing economic gains and alleviating food safety issues. During her master’s program, she was a part of several organizations including the American Peanut Research and Education Society, The National Association of Plant Breeders, and IPBGG’s Graduate Student Association. She was also a recipient UGA’s E. Broadus Browne Research Award in 2020.

Upon graduation, Holton decided to go into the peanut industry. She accepted a position as Research Coordinator at Premium Peanut, a large, grower-owned peanut shelling company. She works with growers, researchers, and industry professionals to develop and advocate for research programs which are beneficial to the industry. She also interacts with several different industry groups including The American Peanut Council and American Peanut Sheller’s Association. She is incredibly passionate about peanut research and looks forward to working on developing solutions to mitigate the current issues that impact the industry at each level of the supply chain.

Alum of the Month for May, 2022

DONNA HARRIS

Donna grew up on a small beef cattle farm near Athens, Georgia where her dad was a part time farmer who raised wheat and soybean, and full-time research professional at the University of Georgia in the soybean breeding program. She developed a love for agriculture early in life. 

Donna received her B.S. and M.S. in Crop Science from the University of Georgia.  Upon finishing her M.S. in December of 2001, she started her first job with Pioneer Hi-Bred in Mankato, Minnesota working in corn breeding as a senior research associate.  Donna then moved to Monsanto Company in Leesburg, GA to work as a corn breeder before deciding to pursue her PhD in January of 2007.  She worked under the direction of Dr. Roger Boerma at the University of Georgia in his soybean breeding program while also working part time in the program as a Research Professional. Her PhD research involved identifying and mapping unique sources of resistance to Soybean rust as well as to investigate the effect of lesion type and canopy severity on yield loss.   She earned her PhD at Georgia in Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Genomics in 2014. 

After completion of her PhD, Donna went to work for BASF Vegetable Seeds (formerly Bayer Vegetable Seeds) where she worked as a senior scientist in the area of tomato prebreeding located in Acampo, CA.  In her role, she led the discovery-based research of the US tomato prebreeding program where she managed and participated in global projects with both internal and external collaborators to ensure a constant flow of value-added traits into commercial varieties. 

In August of 2020, Donna began a position as an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming in the Department of Plant Sciences.  She was hired as the E.A. Whitney Endowed Chair in Plant Sciences and is located at the Sheridan Research and Extension Center in Sheridan, WY.  Her research is in the field of plant breeding and genetics where she is beginning to work on several relevant crops to Wyoming agriculture with a focus on the current and potential needs of both the producer and consumer.  Current work in this area is focused on early maturing dry beans that maintain yield and upright stature, drought tolerant field peas, and native grasses for restoration purposes in rangelands.  She also has a collaboration with Dr. Zenglu Li, the soybean breeder at UGA.  Donna teaches PLNT 4520 Plant Breeding and LIFE 3050 Genetics.  Her passion is to work together with her colleagues on the design and implementation of new technologies and methods to optimize the efficiency and output flow in plant breeding programs. 

Donna feels very fortunate for the opportunity to have received her education at UGA in the Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics, & Genomics.  It has served her well in her career.  Though no longer in Athens, Donna still has family there and visits often. She is a huge Bulldog fan.  In her life outside of work, she enjoys spending time with her husband and three girls (ages 12, 9, and 3) exploring the beauty of the outdoors around Wyoming.

Alum of the Month for March, 2022

CHANDLER LEVINSON

Chandler Levinson grew up in Cumming, GA, and she pursued a B.S. in Biology and a minor in Spanish at Berry College in Rome, GA. Her interest in plant breeding budded during her time as an undergraduate research assistant to Dr. Martin Cipollini in an American Chestnut Breeding Program. She helped screen chestnut trees for blight resistance, working towards the long-term goal of reintroducing this cultural and economic staple back to the eastern United States. 

For graduate school, she was determined to pursue breeding research on a nutritious crop, in which improved yields would have a global impact on food security. Given this opportunity by Dr. Peggy Ozias-Akins at the University of Georgia and funded in part by a NIFA predoctoral grant, she completed a PhD in Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Genomics in 2021. Chandler worked with collaborators in the U.S., Argentina, and Senegal to use wild peanut species to increase viral, fungal, and insect resistance in cultivated peanut to improve and protect peanut yields. Throughout graduate school, she served in many leadership roles in various professional societies, but the most important to her career path was the National Association of Plant Breeders. She encourages all aspiring plant breeders to join.

After graduation, Chandler become a postdoctoral researcher, joining a team of incredible researchers at UC Davis studying maize landraces from Mexico that associate with a N2-fixing microbial community (basically, these maize plants act like soybean to fertilize themselves!). Their short-term goals are to better understand the maize genes that allow the plant to recruit and maintain this N2-fixing microbial community and to identify the most important members of the microbial community. Their long-term goal is to enable conventional maize, and potentially other cereal crops, to fix atmospheric N2 and to reduce dependence on synthetic fertilizer. This will result in profit gains for famers who will spend less on fertilizer and in increased food security for farmers who cannot afford or do not have access to fertilizer. After this postdoctoral research position, Chandler aspires to become a professor with a network of international collaborations and a research program aimed at alleviating food insecurity through plant breeding.

Chandler highly recommends the Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics, & Genomics at UGA to all aspiring plant breeders. The course work, professional development opportunities, and hands-on research prepared her for a successful career in plant breeding.

Alum of the Month for January, 2022

DAVIS GIMODE

Davis earned his undergraduate and MSc degrees in Biotechnology from Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya. He carried out his Msc research work at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). This involved developing genomic resources for finger millet, an orphan crop of great utility in Africa and Asia. In 2014, Davis had an opportunity to visit the lab of Dr. Katrien Devos, who does collaborative work on finger millet with ICRISAT scientists. The three month stay at the lab was instrumental in his decision to pursue his PhD at UGA.

In Fall 2015, Davis joined the Institute of Plant Breeding Genetics and Genomics as a graduate research assistant in Dr. Peggy Ozias-Akins’ lab. The main focus of his dissertation work was understanding the impact of genomic segments derived from wild peanut and introgressed into cultivated peanut. This involved comprehensively genotyping and phenotyping a chromosome segment substitution line population and associating the various traits to particular genomic regions.

Davis received his PhD in 2019 and later joined ICRISAT, Nairobi, Kenya as a Post-Doctoral Research Consultant in the lab of Dr. Damaris Odeny. His duties include analyzing and managing genomics data generated for ICRISAT mandate crops, including peanut (called groundnut in Kenya), sorghum, finger millet and chickpea. He also extensively interacts with breeders from ICRISAT and other ICRISAT affiliated institutions in east, west and central Africa to consult on how best genomic tools can be incorporated in breeding pipelines.

Davis appreciates the cutting-edge training he received at the Institute of Plant Breeding Genetics and Genomics. He credits his competence as a scientist to the peerless mentorship of his advisor Dr. Peggy Ozias-Akins. For Davis, the broad exposure to science through formal instruction, research activities, conferences and interaction with faculty and colleagues serve as a treasured repository of experiences that inform his scientific endeavors. 

Alum of the Month for November, 2021

BEN STEWART-BROWN

Ben Stewart-Brown was born in Minneapolis, MN but spent his formative years in Salisbury, MD (the town people drive through on their way to Ocean City, MD). He received a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Science and Technology from the University of Maryland, College Park. He originally was planning to follow in his parents footsteps and pursue a degree in veterinary medicine, but several summer internships with Monsanto led him down a path to pursue a career in plant breeding.

Ben completed three summer internships with Monsanto from 2010-2012. In both 2010 and 2012, Ben worked closely with Dr. David Mayonado to characterize new soybean and maize cultivars for the DelMarVa region of the country. They also completed herbicide spray trials to characterize herbicide efficacy and potential for drift/volatilization of newly deployed herbicide chemistries. During his internship in the summer of 2011, he joined the Monsanto corn physiology team under the directions of Dr. Paolo Castiglioni. This team was operating out of their Davis, California site. This internship centered around characterizing the efficacy of a transgenic drought tolerant maize known commercially as DroughtGard™. Though not directly involving the field of plant breeding, these internships gave him an appreciation for the impact plant breeding can have on people’s lives.

Ben joined the Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Genomics at the University of Georgia in 2012 to pursue a PhD. Ben’s doctoral research/training took place within the UGA Soybean Breeding and Genetics Laboratory, under the direction of Dr. Zenglu Li. He was trained in cutting edge molecular breeding techniques in addition to the fundamentals of plant breeding/genetics/genomics. His research involved the identification of novel genomic regions associated with seed yield from diverse germplasm as well as elucidating the efficacy of genomic selection for seed yield, protein content, and oil content within an applied breeding program.

Ben graduated from UGA in the Spring of 2018 and joined legacy Monsanto/Bayer as a Soybean Line Development Breeder shortly thereafter. He currently lives in Ames, IA with his wife, Emily. When he initially started, his primary focus was on breeding high yielding soybean cultivars for Maturity Group 2. He has transitioned in the last several months to a role as a Soybean Product Design Scientist for North America. As a Product Design Scientist, he is focused on optimization of the early stages of the soybean breeding pipeline: crossing, genomic selection, and haplotype characterization. He is driven to combine breakthroughs in data science, molecular techniques, and breeding methodologies to develop elite soybean cultivars for farmer/customers.

Alum of the Month for September, 2021

WINNIE GIMODE

Winnie Gimode is originally from Kenya.  She received a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from Kenyatta University, Kenya, and proceeded to do a Master of Science (Biochemistry) at the same institution. Before joining UGA, Winnie had the opportunity of working in a top research laboratory in Kenya (Kenya Medical Research Institute), where her research focused on malaria drug resistance. At the same time, she was a lecturer of Biochemistry at Mount Kenya University, where she taught undergraduate Biochemistry courses. It was during this time that Winnie took a keen interest in teaching and mentoring students, hence motivating her to pursue graduate education at UGA.

Pursuing a doctorate degree at the Institute of Plant Breeding Genetics and Genomics at the University of Georgia was a complete change of course for Winnie. She not only completely shifted to a new field and embraced a different kind of challenge, but also excelled and found great satisfaction in it. Winnie was trained in the lab of Cecilia McGregor, which focuses on vegetable breeding, genetics, and genomics. During her PhD, she developed assays applicable in marker assisted selection for flowering time and resistance to gummy stem blight disease, which are key traits in watermelon breeding.

Winnie graduated in August 2020 and became a postdoctoral research associate in Katrien Devos’ lab, at UGA. Research in the Devos lab focuses on economically important cereals, bioenergy crops and halophytic turfgrasses. Specifically, Winnie works on determining the genetic basis of important traits in switchgrass and finger millet by identifying and characterizing candidate genes associated with the traits.

Graduating from the Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics, & Genomics at UGA accorded her skills, experiences and exposure that prepared her for research and leadership in the competitive world of science.

Alum of the Month for July, 2021

ZACHARY KING

Zachary King is originally from Old Forge, NY in the heart of the Adirondack mountains. He received a Bachelor of Science in Biotechnology, with honors at SUNY-ESF, Syracuse, NY. Through his undergraduate research, he became passionate about genetically engineering plants.

He received a Master’s of Science in 2011 from the University of Georgia. There he successfully selected elite genotypes of switchgrass from the cultivar ‘Performer,’ and created reliable and efficient methods to genetically engineer these with the gene gun through a United States Department of Energy Grant. He also bred switchgrass genotypes amenable to engineering. During his master’s degree, Dr. Parrott helped Zach secure a unique opportunity to study abroad at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Sciences (BOKU), in Vienna, Austria. While there, he helped develop tissue culture propagation methods for jatropha (Jatropha curcus).

Prior to completing his Master’s of Science, he won a competitive award to travel to the Philippines, sponsored by International Rice Research Institute. There he completed their Research to Production course, interviewed farmers, and realized he wanted to be a plant breeder. Shortly after, Zach started his PhD under the direction of Dr. Boerma and Dr. Li. He won the United Soybean Fellowship, which supported research monies to find, map, and deploy new resistance genes to soybean rust (Phakopsora pachyrhizi). Collaboratively, Zach fine mapped Rpp2, and discovered three novel resistance genes Rpp4-b, Rpp6-b, and a novel resistance gene Rpp7. His research group also deployed elite soybean varieties with Rpp genes (near isogenic lines) that are freely available to the research community. During his PhD work, Zach got a CO-OP at Monsanto as the assistant to a soybean line development breeder (Dr. Jesse Gilsinger), who mentored Zach and got him excited about breeding in industry.

Zach graduated in 2015 and became a Maize Line Development Breeder at legacy Monsanto/Bayer where he was mentored under Dr. Marvin Boerboom and others. When collaborative breeding initiatives were created, he became the Maize Genetic Enhancement Breeder for Monsanto, and led all efforts for diversity breeding for the 100 RM and earlier corn belt and developed methodologies for disease resistance breeding, and rapid cycling too.

In June of 2020, Zach joined Syngenta as a Product Placement Scientist (commercial breeder) and in June of 2021 became a Breeding Project Lead (line development breeder), allowing him to pursue his greatest passions. Zach has five inbred patents from his first year of breeding and is excited about the future of technology and breeding methodologies.

As a graduate of the Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics, & Genomics, he was well prepared through hands-on experiences and course work to pursue professional challenges and opportunities. In his spare time, he enjoys kayaking, SCUBA diving, archery, hunting, dog training, and fishing.