-Magdalen Lindeberg

Congratulations to SIPS graduate students Ilexis Chu-Jacoby, Samuel Herr, and Seren Villwock and to Cornell undergraduate Marty Alani who have received NSF-GRFP awards or honorable mentions for 2022. The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program is the country’s oldest fellowship program that directly supports graduate students in various science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields and who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions.

Uncovering the gene networks controlling timing of organ initiation

Byron Rusnack, graduate student with Mike Scanlon (Awardee)
Byron started his graduate work at Cornell in 2020 after earning his BS in Plant Science from the University of Minnesota and internships at both Cornell and the Danforth Center.

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Examining linkages between soil microbiome functions and plant secondary metabolism in urban agroecosystems

Ilexis Chu-Jacoby, graduate student with Jenny Kao-Kniffin (awardee)
Ilexis’ research interests lie in soil and community health, agroecology, and ethnobotany. Their aim is to increase representation of BIPOC histories and traditional knowledge systems into the mainstream science curriculum, and co-creating knowledge with urban farming communities to generate management strategies for urban farms.

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Maize (Zea mays) altruism as a consequence of below-ground kin recognition

Sam Herr, incoming graduate student (awardee)
Sam will be starting work with Mike Gore in the fall. He is a Class ’22 graduate of Western Washington University with a combined major of Biology and Mathematics with a minor in honors interdisciplinary studies and statistics. Sam’s research interests include genomics and epigenomics analysis and their application to the improvement of crops.

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Investigating linkage vs. pleiotropy in a biofortified cassava quality trade-off

Seren Villwock, graduate student with Jean-Luc Jannink (honorable mention)

Seren is conducting research as part of the NextGen Cassava project. She is investigating the relationship between dry matter content and carotenoids with the goal of determining whether the negative correlation between carotenoids and dry matter can be overcome through breeding, or if the traits are intrinsically connected by a metabolic trade-off.

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Identifying Divergent Origins of Convergent Defense Metabolism

Marty Alani, undergraduate working in the program of Georg Jander (awardee)

During his time as an undergraduate at Cornell, Marty has studied regulation of cardiac glycosides in Erysimum cheiranthoides, a member of the brassica family. He will be starting a PhD program in biology at MIT next fall.