Meet the dedicated team of student organizers of the 2024 symposium.
Melinda Zubrod
I grew up on a small corn and soybean farm in northwestern Iowa. I attended Iowa State University where I earned a B.A. in Agronomy with a minor in genetics. While attending ISU I worked as an undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Asheesh Singh’s soybean program where I studied root architecture and soybean nodulation. I am currently a PhD student at Washington State University studying winter wheat breeding under Dr. Arron Carter. My PhD project focuses on utilizing a drone-mounted multispectral sensor to make selections in a breeding program. I am currently working on using vegetative indices to identify herbicide injury in winter wheat plots.
Adele Jamalzei
I’m Adele, a Persian researcher from Tehran, Iran. During my master’s degree, I conducted a study involving 192 spring wheat accessions in collaboration with Dr. Khalil Zaynali Nezhad from Gorgan University and Dr. Andreas Börner from IPK Gene Bank. Our research focused on performing GWAS for yield-related traits in spring wheat, which led to the discovery of several QTLs associated with increased yield. Prior to joining Washington State University, I gained experience by working for two years at the Wheat Gene Bank in northern Iran. Currently, I am part of Dr. Arron Carter’s winter wheat program at Washington State University as a PhD student, where my research is centered on QTL pyramiding to enhance spring wheat yield. Our primary objective is to improve spring wheat yield by introducing alleles that separately enhance kernel weight and kernel number. This involves strategically combining these alleles to develop higher-yielding wheat populations.
Martin Churuvija
I grew up in Argentina, where I earned a BS in Electronics Engineering with a specialization in mechatronics and control from the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology. I’m currently a PhD candidate in Biological and Agricultural Engineering at WSU, specializing in agricultural automation. As a graduate research assistant at the Center for Precision and Automated Agricultural Systems, based at the Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center, I focus on automating orchard operations. My research interests include agricultural robotics, machine vision, and artificial intelligence.
Marita White
Marita White was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she also earned bachelor’s degrees in Biology and Biochemistry from Bethel University. She moved to Pullman in August of 2022 to begin gradute school at Washington State University. At WSU, she is conducting research on wheat to improve its acid soil tolerance and investigate the role of soil microorganisms in acid soil tolerance in wheat. Her personal interests, apart from plants, include dragonflies, fishing, playing violin, being outdoors, and reading. Fun fact: Marita shares a birthday with her older sister, even though they are not twins.
Chamaporn Paiboonvorachat
I am from Thailand, where I completed my B.S. in Agriculture (Soil Sciences) at Kasetsart University. I subsequently earned a M.S. in Geography and Environmental Sciences, with a major focus on Remote Sensing and GIS. Currently pursuing my PhD in Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Washington State University. My research focuses on remote sensing and data analytics applications in agriculture. My PhD project focuses on utilizing vegetation indices and digital traits derived from multi-scale remote sensing, and multimodal data for wheat yield prediction. I am particularly interested in developing machine learning approaches and spatiotemporal deep learning models to enhance our understanding of agricultural monitoring and crop modelling through data-driven solutions. As a graduate research assistant with the Phenomics Lab under Dr. Sindhuja Sankaran, I contribute to advancing agricultural data science (multispectral and temporal imagery, point cloud data, photosynthesis data) through phenomics and precision agriculture, and animal data analytics research.
Olufunke Ayegbidun
Gagandeep Kaur