UNDER CONSTRUCTION AS OF June 2025
Principal Investigator
Dr. Katie (Kaitlin) Gold is an Assistant Professor of Grape Pathology and Extension Specialist at Cornell University whose research has pioneered the fundamental and applied science of plant disease sensing to improve early grape disease detection and management. She is the Principal Investigator of Grape Sensing, Pathology, and Extension Lab at Cornell AgriTech, which operates extensive field trials across 10ac of pathology vineyards in Geneva, NY. She leads the pest and disease risk mitigation arm of NASA Acres and is an internationally recognized expert in remote sensing of plant disease. Gold has deep ties to the US and global grape industry via her extension appointment and membership on the National Grape Research Alliance Integrated Production Systems committee. In 2024 Gold was awarded the New York Wine & Grape Foundation Unity Research Award for her pioneering work in the field of grape disease sensing. Her work has been featured in a range of media including the LA Times, NASA HQ, Cornell Chronicle, Bloomberg News, Good Fruit Grower, and The Late Show with Steven Colbert.
Staff
Dave Combs is a Research Support Specialist II in the Gold Lab and is responsible for anything and everything related to our 4 acres of pathology vineyards, including our annual fungicide efficacy studies for grapevine powdery mildew, downy mildew, black rot, and Botrytis bunch rot. Dave has vast field experience gained over his >30 years working for Cornell managing applied field programs ranging from tree fruit insecticide trials to vineyard fungicide trials. He is responsible for all applications, scouting, data collection, analysis and reports in the annual efficacy testing experiments. Dave is the ‘jack of all trades’ in the lab and pitches in where he is needed. This also includes precise image annotation for training the autonomous robot, lab ordering and inventory, greenhouse duties and field equipment maintenance and operation. Dave has robust background in viticulture and previously taught Integrated Pest Management at Finger Lakes Community College.
Postdocs
under construction!
Graduate Students
Fernando E. Romero Galvan (Ferg) is a PhD student in the Plant Pathology and Plant Microbe Biology section at SIPS with the Gold Lab. Fernando’s research focuses on detecting, measuring, and predicting plant disease in vineyards at scale using imaging spectroscopy sourced from airborne and spaceborne instruments. Fernando completed his undergraduate degree in Geographic Information Science at California State University, Northridge in 2019, after which he joined the ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as an intern. At JPL, Fernando worked to communicate natural disasters as seen by the ECOSTRESS instrument led a research project to use Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging spectrometer (AVIRIS) data to measure mycorrhizae abundance in North American Forests. Here at Cornell, Fernando found his love for applications-driven remote sensing and chose to pursue a graduate program of study that would allow him to further investigate plant-microbe interactions with spectroscopy. Fernando is a master-ranked Starcraft 2 player, was born in Mexico City, and has been restoring a 1974 Volkswagen super-beetle since he was 16 years old which he hopes to one day use for his daily commute. Contact Fernando by email at fer36@cornell.edu.
Kathleen Kanaley is a PhD student in the Plant Pathology and Plant Microbe Biology section at SIPS with the Gold Lab. Kathleen is using satellite and drone imagery to develop remote sensing tools for early disease detection in Finger Lakes vineyards. Kathleen holds bachelor’s degrees in Natural Science and Spanish Literature from Fordham University. Prior to joining the Gold Lab, she worked as a conservation corps member in western Colorado, as a research intern at the Universidad de las Américas in Quito, Ecuador, and as a forestry aide for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Kathleen’s family grows grapes on Seneca Lake, where she spends her summers shoot-positioning, weed-pulling, and rambling through the vineyard. Contact Kathleen by email at kk697@cornell.edu.
Alumni
Postdocs
Dr. Saeed Hosseinzadeh was a postdoc in the Gold Lab from January 2023 to January 2025. In the Gold Lab, he developed an autonomous hyperspectral microscopy robot in collaboration with USDA-ARS and the CAIR LAB, which he used to study the scalability of hyperspectral fungicide sensing. Dr. Hosseinzadeh is now a Tech Developer on the Discovery Field Team at Bayer Crop Science.
Dr. Rocio Calderon was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Gold lab from February 2020 – November 2024 where she led a NASA funded project to build a global disease surveillance system for soilborne plant pathogens. Dr. Calderon is now a Remote Sensing Scientist specializing in crop disease surveillance at CSIC in her home town of Cordoba, Spain.
Dr. Nikita Gambhir was a postdoc in the Gold Lab from November 2020 to February 2022. In the Gold Lab, she used in situ and proximal hyperspectral sensing to non-destructively monitor fungicide efficacy and activity in grapevine. Dr. Gambhir is now a Fungicide Discovery PI at FMC.
Graduate Students
Undergraduate Students
- Tim Williams, Summer 2025.
- Theodore Lee, Summer 2023
- Cadet Hannah Grover, United State Air Force Academy, Summer 2025
- Jose Del Cid, CSU Northridge, Summer 2024
- Tracy Sorrow, Oregon State University, Summer 2024
- Kamille Padilla-Jusino, University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, Summer 2023
- Mia Scott, Summer 2022, now a PhD student in Plant Breeding at OSU.
- Monique Michaud, Summer 2022
- Somil Aggarwal, Cornell ’22, was a member of the Gold lab January 2021 – Fall 2022 where he worked on grapevine variety discrimination with AVIRIS imagery. While in the lab, Somil co-founded an agritech start-up, Agcess, that provides precision agriculture insights to small farmers in order to bridge the technological gap between corporate and small farms. In Spring 2023, he left began pursuing his start up full time.
- Graham Trolley, Cornell ’21, was a member of the Gold Lab from August 2020-June 2021. As a senior undergraduate in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, he used AVIRIS-NG imaging spectroscopy to differentiate grapevine varieties across California. Graham joined Dr. Heidi Dierssen’s ocean imaging spectroscopy laboratory at UConn to pursue a MS in oceanography in Fall 2021.
- Josh Evans was a member of the Gold Lab from August 2020-June 2021. As a shared USDA technician with the USDA GGRU in Geneva, NY, Josh built Gold Lab’s QScout, a QGIS plugin for automated georeferencing of scouting data. Josh began a PhD in synthetic and molecular biology at Arizona State University in Fall 2021.
Staff
- Angela Paul was a Technician III in the Gold Lab who supported laboratory, greenhouse, and field aspects of Gold lab research. Angela is now a PhD student in Dr. Justine Vanden Heuvel’s Viticulture Lab at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.
Visiting Scientists
- Lorenzo Pippi, 2025, PhD student, University of Pisa.
- Mateo Bareyre, 2024, MS student, University of Bordeaux.
- Nana Bitsadze, 2023 and 2024, Assoc. Professor, Agricultural University of Georgia.
- Paola Fournier, 2023, PhD Student, University of Bordeaux.
- Lior Gur, 2022. PhD Student, Volcani Institute.
- Dominick Starzmann, 2022, PhD student, University of Stuttgart.
Vineyard Technicians
- Caroline Kamal, Summer 2025
- Andre Garcia, Summer 2025
- Courtney Herzberg, Summer 2025
- Jason Kwong, Summer 2024
- Alex Marancik, Summer 2024
- Nicole Diazurio, Summer 2023
- Liam Crawley, Summer 2023
- Jonas Campagna, Summer 2022
- Megan Walker, Summer 2022
- Eric Winarski, Summer 2022
- Peri Wivell, Summer 2021
- Holly Staid, Summer 2021