2025: Advancing Agriculture: Integrating Science, Technology, and Sustainability
Exploring new agricultural technology and focusing on strategies to deal with challenges in crop production in a given environment.
2025 Poster Presentation Winners
- First place: Tana Arlynn
- Second place: Nataniel Jablonski
- Third place: Jeremy Boutin
- Undergraduate winner: Ian Skjegstad
2025 Speakers
Ines Hanrahan
Ines Hanrahan, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission (WTFRC). She provides administrative leadership to the organization, oversight of the WTFRC staff, and contributes to strategic planning for the WTFRC. Ines strives to ensure all funding is geared towards investments in industry priority areas to enable increased productivity, improved product quality and to help growers stay economically viable in a globally competitive marketplace. She is committed to fostering vibrant public-private partnerships with tree fruit scientists worldwide, is highly dedicated to connecting with the next generation of industry professionals, both as a mentor and as an industry leader, and to setting a positive example for an increasingly diverse global work force. Hanrahan’s interest in farming is not only part of her roots, education, and work. Her family owns and operates a commercial tree fruit orchard in the Yakima valley that produces cherries, pears and apples.
Robert Brueggeman
Robert Brueggeman was born and grew up outside of Cheney, Washington. He received his BS in Genetics and Cell Biology (1998), MS in Crop Sciences (2004) and PhD in Crop Sciences (2009) from Washington State University. He joined the Department of Plant Pathology at North Dakota State University in 2010 as an assistant professor and started his research program focusing on barley pathology and the molecular genetics underlying host pathogen interactions. In 2018, he was named the Dr. Charles J. Mode Endowed Professor of Genomics Research at NDSU. In 2019 he joined the WSU Department of Crops and Soil Sciences as the barley breeder and Nilan endowed chair of barley research and education. He continued his basic research focused on host-pathogen genetic interactions and began investigating the genetic and genomic underlying end use quality with a focus on translating this knowledge to the barley breeding program.
Juliet M. Marshall
Juliet M. Marshall is the Associate Director of the Idaho Ag Experiment Station and a Research Professor of Cereals Agronomy and Pathology at the University of Idaho, in the Department of Plant Sciences, joining the UI faculty in 2004. With 33 years of cereal experience in southern Idaho at both the Aberdeen Research and Extension Center (starting in 1992) and the Idaho Falls R&E Center, Juliet’s responsibilities include the University’s cereal variety trials, research in cereal pathology, product testing, and fertility for end-use quality. Current areas of research emphasis include host resistance and integrated control tactics for FHB, stripe rust, dwarf bunt, and cereal cyst nematode. Dr. Marshall has been the recipient of the Potlatch Joe Anderson Wheat Agronomy Endowment since its establishment in 2013 by the Idaho Wheat Commission and received the Idaho Barley Commission’s Service Award in 2016. Dr. Marshall served as Department Head (Unit Leader) for Plant Sciences for four years prior to appointment as Associate Director of the IAES, assisting the Director with crop research at the experiment stations. Juliet’s degrees were earned at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Ph.D. 1992), and the University of Delaware (M.S. 1988 and B.S. 1986).
Jian Jin
Jian Jin is an associate professor from the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Purdue University. Dr. Jin received his Ph.D. in Agricultural Engineering from Iowa State University in 2009. He earned his M.S. degree in Computer Engineering from Denmark Technical University in 2005 and his B.S. degree in Computer Science from Zhejiang University in 2003.
Prior to joining Purdue, Dr. Jin conducted research at DuPont Pioneer (now Corteva), where he was most recently a Technology Leader working on crop phenotyping and led a team for the company’s new controlled environment phenotyping systems for automated plant screening.
Dr. Jin’s major research interest at Purdue is to develop the next generation plant sensor technologies, along with machine vision, image processing, and data modeling.
Prior to joining Purdue, Dr. Jin conducted research at DuPont Pioneer (now Corteva), where he was most recently a Technology Leader working on crop phenotyping and led a team for the company’s new controlled environment phenotyping systems for automated plant screening.
Dr. Jin’s major research interest at Purdue is to develop the next generation plant sensor technologies, along with machine vision, image processing, and data modeling.
2025 Organizers
Melinda Zubrod
Adele Jamalzei
Marita White
Chamaporn Paiboonvorachat
Martin Churuvija
Olufunke Ayegbidun
Gagandeep Kaur
2025 Gallery
2024: Plant Science Symposium
Challenges in Crop Production Across Diverse Environments
2024 Speakers
Ksenija Gasic
Dr. Ksenija Gasic joins us from South Carolina, where she leads the peach breeding program at Clemson University. Her research focuses on the development of high-quality, disease-free varieties, thus greatly contributing to the maintenance of the supply of fresh peaches to the US market. Dr Gasic’s successful program generated more than $5M in grants, dozens of peer-reviewed publications, while ensuring the training of the next generation of peach breeders.
Jacob Blauer
Dr. Blauer is a graduate from WSU who worked in industry for several years before returning to WSU in 2020 as the postharvest potato physiologist. Dr. Blauer’s current research focuses first on potato variety development for the fresh and processing industries and develops practical solutions for growers while adding to the basic science knowledge base. Dr. Blauer is highly interested in heat stress and its associated impact on potato physiology for production, quality, and generative potential.
Lee DeHaan
Since joining the Land Institute in 2001, Dr DeHaan’s effort has been dedicated to the development of perennial grass and legume crops. His current research focuses on perennial wheatgrass development, noting that wheatgrass is already being commercialized as a superfood. Dr DeHaan’s work has expanded into looking at the management and the food functionality of wheatgrass, involving many collaborators in the U.S, Canada, and Europe.
Micheal Neff
Dr. Neff joined the WSU Department of Crop and Soil Sciences in 2007. He is the inventor of two awarded patents. His research program focuses on developing new varieties of turfgrasses and other grasses to address climate change, water use, and environmental impact. The program’s most recent Kentucky Bluegrass variety, ‘Matchless’ was developed for dryland seed production without field burning and is currently licensed by the Fusion Seed Company in Fairfield, WA.
Cristiano Lemes
Dr. Lemes graduated in Plant breeding and genetics from Kansas State University in 2017. In 2019, he joined Corteva Agrisciences in the role of varietal wheat breeder/research scientist. Dr Lemes is leading a wheat breeding program in the soft red winter market class with a focus on delivering high-yielding varieties, as well as hybrid wheat in the United States and Canada.
2024 Student Speakers
Marie Dorval
Marie Dorval comes from Montana State University where she studies crop management approaches to reduce the devastative impacts of the foliar disease Ascochyta blight in chickpea.
Thapa Sahil
Thapa Sahil comes from Mount Vernon, WA. He investigates cultural management techniques to reduce the incidence of onion bacterial diseases.
Akshdeep Kamboj
Akshdeep Kamboj studies hybrid wheat at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His research focuses on understanding the contributions of genotype, environment, and genotype-by-environment interactions on the yield stability of hybrid wheat.
Elliot Marston
Elliot Marston is from the Crop and Soil Science dept. at Washington State University. He studies the genetic control of Late-Maturity Alpha-amylase in winter wheat.
2024 Organizers
Andrew Herr
President
Melinda Zubrod
Vice President
Peter Schmucker
Food and Venue Chair
Marita White
Poster chair
Adele Jamalzei
Technology Chair
Aisha
Speaker Chair
Faishal
Speaker Chair
Matthew Brook
Media & Fundraising Chair
2024 Gallery
2021: Plant Science Symposium
2021 Poster Presentation Winners
- First Place: Lauren Braley
- Second Place: Bailey Hallwachs
- Third Place: Sandra Gomez
- Fourth Place: Abhilash Chandel
- Fifth Place: Bixia Zhang
- Popular Choice: Ammar Elakhdar
- Honorable Mention: Wenzhuo Wu
2021 Speakers
Morgan Halane
NYC-based biologist with a focus on plant immunity
Satyanarayana Tatineni
Researcher at USDA
Sarathi Weraduwage
Researcher at Michigan State University
2021 Student Speakers
Kathleen Hickey
Topic: Efficiency of self-protection mechanisms for drought resiliency
Erica Biasuz
Topic: Honeycrisp apple trees water relations are affected by rootstock vigor
2019: Foundations for the Future: Embracing New Agricultural Technology
Feeding the future depends on innovation in agriculture, including new technology, diverse crops, and improvement to classic methods.
2019 Speakers
Joyce Van Eck
Boyce Thompson Institute: Center for Plant Biotechnology Research
Topic: Fast-tracking Improvement of Groundcherry and Goldenberry by CRISPR: Ripening the Potential of Underutilized Fruit Crops
Sayed Azam-Ali
University of Nottingham-Malaysia: Crops for The Future
Topic: Forgotten Foods to Feed the Future
Argelia Lorence
Arkansas State University: Plant High-Throughput Phenotyping Facility
Topic: Harnessing the Power of -omic Approaches to Better Understand the Role of the Inositol Pathway to Ascorbate in Confering Plants Enhanced Growth and Resilience to Abiotic Stresses
Lav Khot
Washington State University: Agricultural Automation Engineering
Topic: Transitioning to Smart Agriculture: Technology Landscape
Amanda Cavanagh
University of Illinois: Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology
Topic: Engineering an Alternative Photorespiration Pathway to Improve Photosynthesis and Crop Yield
Rosana Serikawa
Corteva Agriscience: Agricultural Division of DowDuPont
Topic: Product Development – From Discovery to Orphan Crops Registrations
2019 Student Speakers
Niall Miller
WSU-Vancouver | Travel grant recipient
Topic: The Effects of Domestication on the Legume-Rhizobia Mutualism
Anil Adhikari
Texas A&M | Travel grant recipient
Topic: Hybrid wheat: a promising technology for feeding the future
Holly Lane
Texas A&M | Travel grant recipient
Topic: Correlating Near-Infrared Spectra of Kernels to Grain Yield in Maize
2019 Gallery
2018: Diversity in Agriculture
Diversity is inherent to plant breeding, not only in the germplasm and environments we study, but also regarding the people, techniques, and ideas.
Symposium recording can be found in: Symposium Recording
2018 Speakers
Paul Christou
ICREA Research Professor at Universitat de Lleida
Topic: Thirty five years of plant biotechnology: Personal reflections and the importance of diversity
Linda MacKechnie
Ball Horticultural Company
Topic: Terraces and Islands: Career Migration in Plant Biology
Debora Menicos
Driscoll’s
Topic: Increasing diversity is the main key to improvement for plants breeding and for professional development
Nilsa Bosque-Perez
University of Idaho, Moscow
Topic: Utilizing crop diversity to enhance resistance to insect pests
Teresa Capell
Universitat de Lleida
Topic: Corn domestication: diversity and artistic creativity for science communication
Elizabeth Lee
University of Guelph
Topic: Diversity-Variation-Change: Lessons that we can learn from plant breeding
Renee Lafitte
Corteva Agriscience
2018 Gallery
2017: Pioneering Ideas in Agriculture
A unique focus on entrepreneurial endeavors with innovative approaches to agriculture.
2017 Speakers
Amit Dhingra
Washington State University & Phytelligence
Topic: Does graduate school produce innovative thinkers?
Patrick Schnable
Iowa State University & Data2Bio
Topic: Entrepreneurship and Academia: Three case Studies
Roger Muren
Formerly Bayer CropScience Vegetable Seeds
Topic: Innovation in the private seed industry
Jason Cavotorta
Earthworks Seeds
Topic: Challenges & Opportunities in Agricultural Start-ups
Nicholas Staropoli
Genetic Literacy Project
Topic: Genetic Literacy Project and its role in achieving public scientific literacy related to agricultural biotechnology
Matt King
DuPont Pioneer
Topic: From satellites to sequencing: driving precision agriculture through collaborations and innovation
2017 Gallery
