-Magdalen Lindeberg
Congratulations to Chase Crowell, Jenna Hershberger, Sarah Jensen, Brandon Miller, Jack Satterlee, and Daniel Sweeney, recipients of the Barbara McClintock Graduate Student Award for 2020.
Brandon Miller is a graduate student with Nina Bassuk, researching transplant failure and factors limiting the establishment of desirable tree species in harsh urban environments. He studies root hydraulic conductance and the ability of plants to adjust in response to drought stress and different production techniques.
Chase Crowell is a graduate student in the program of Chris Smart. His research focuses on characterizing diversity among taxa of of the fungal genus Melampsora, that cause rust disease on willow. He is also seeking to learn more about molecular host-pathogen interactions in this system through genomic comparison with related Melampsora pathogens.
Jenna Hershberger is a graduate student in the program of Mike Gore. Research interests include genomic investigation of sweet corn nutritional quality traits and development spectroscopic tools for phenotyping quality traits in cassava.
Sarah Jensen is a graduate student in Ed Buckler’s research program. One of her projects focuses on development of tools for generating whole-genome genotypes from low-coverage sequence data. She also investigates how RNA and protein characteristics contribute to plant thermal adaptation.
Jack Satterlee is conducting graduate research in Mike Scanlon’s lab. He is using single-cell gene expression analysis and CRISPR/Cas9-enabled molecular lineage tracing to decipher the contributions of gene expression and cell lineage to plant development in maize.
Daniel Sweeney is a graduate student in Mark Sorrells’ program, focusing on genomics assisted breeding to improve spring malting barley for production in New York State. Disease resistance, malting quality, and genetic relationships with pre-harvest sprouting and dormancy are traits of particular interest.
The Barbara McClintock Graduate Student Award is made possible by an endowment from Dr. Robert Rabson to honor outstanding senior graduate students studying in the Plant Sciences (Plant Biology, Plant Pathology & Plant-Microbe Biology, Plant Breeding, Horticulture or Soil & Crop Sciences) at Cornell. It is awarded annually and students are selected based on their academic, research, teaching, and outreach achievements as well as on their potential to continue an outstanding career in the Plant Sciences. Income from the fund is used to support training of the awardees.