Dr. Dan Chitwood, Michigan State University

Dr. Dan Chitwood works at Michigan State University as part of the Department of Horticulture & the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering. His research focuses on describing the physical shape and structure of plants using X-Ray Computed Tomography (CT) and Topological Data Analysis (TDA) to quantify the shape of morphological data that has been shaped by evolution, domestication, and the environment of living organisms. These physical structures can be related to genes that increase yield in crops or be used to measure and predict effects of the environment and climate change.

Dr. Patricia Lang, Stanford University

Plant biologist Dr. Patricia Lang studies historical adaptation to the environment as a key to understanding if and how plants will evolve to anthropogenic global change. Combining large-scale herbarium phenotyping and genomics with modern molecular biology tools, she investigates how plants have modified their leaf stomatal pores to cope with several centuries of climate change, and functionally dissects the genes involved in such changes through leaf development. Ultimately, she aims to use this approach of “functional historical genetics” across model- and non-model species to systematically mine physiological pathways for developmental mechanisms and strategies of plant climate change responses.

After a BSc in Biology at the Universities of Würzburg, Germany and Umeå, Sweden and a MSc in Plant and Forest Biotechnology at the Umeå Plant Science Centre in Sweden, she obtained her Ph.D. in molecular biology in 2016, studying the plant microRNA silencing machinery with Detlef Weigel at the Max Planck Institute for Biology in Tübingen, Germany. Following a short postdoc in herbarium genomics and population genetics with Hernán Burbano’s Ancient Genomics and Evolution group at the same institute, she is now an HFSP postdoctoral fellow at Stanford with Dominique Bergmann, and research associate with the California Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Logan Kistler, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History

Dr. Logan Kistler is a Curator and Research Anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. He is an environmental archaeologist whose research program uses ancient DNA and genomics to study the evolution of domestic plants and other human–environment interactions.

He has studied a variety of systems from the unique evolutionary history of maize to the rearing Amazonian parrots.

He received his bachelors at the University of Kentucky in anthropology and sociology followed by a Masters and PhD in anthropology at Pennsylvania University.

Dr. Mitchell J. Feldman, University of California Davis

Dr. Mitchell J. Feldman is a postdoctoral researcher helping to improve strawberry at the University of California Davis. Where he works with Dr. Steven Knapp to research breeding, genetics, and genomics of strawberry, including the development, testing, and deployment of genetically superior cultivars, identifying and understanding genetic factors underlying economically important phenotypes, enabling and applying marker-assisted selection and genomic selection, and advancing high-throughput genotyping and phenotyping approaches in strawberry.

He works to understand how domestication and breeding have reshaped genetic diversity in strawberry so they can identify favorable alleles in exotic and wild germplasm sources that are not present in elite production germplasm sources. They are also developing an understanding of the genetics of resistance to above-ground and soil-borne pathogens, coupled with delivering cultivars resistant to multiple pathogens.

Jon Reinders, Corteva Agriscience

I grew up in rural Minnesota during the 1980s farm crisis, have seen changes and challenges that farming communities face, and have worked towards envisioning a better future through science. My professional interests focus on translating basic research into new applications to accelerate solving complex biological problems. During graduate school, I studied mechanisms of epigenetic gene regulation to better understand the impact of epigenetic inheritance on phenotypic variation. At Corteva Agriscience, I lead a discovery research team that aims to produce doubled haploid populations more efficiently. In one aspect, the work comprises enabling a reliable and reproducible paternal doubled haploid method for maize. This presentation will describe a collaboration with an external partner as an example of using new technologies to solve an old challenge.