Affiliated Scientists
![](https://blogs.cornell.edu/tufanlab/files/2024/05/CourtneyHeadshots0056_rt-1-800x800.jpg)
Courtney McCluney, Research Consultant (she/her)
Dr. Courtney L. McCluney is an award-winning educator, researcher, and consultant of diversity, equity, inclusion, and wellness in organizations. Trained as a social scientist and field researcher, Dr. McCluney has received several grants and recognition for her work on racial equity and inclusion. Her work is featured in several peer reviewed academic publications, and she is a contributing writer to Forbes and the Harvard Business Review. Dr. McCluney is the founder of EquiWell Partners–a consulting advisory firm reimagining our relationship with work and rest. She was most recently an assistant professor and academic director of workplace inclusion in the ILR School at Cornell University. Dr. McCluney completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, earned her PhD in Psychology at the University of Michigan, and BA in Psychology and Interpersonal/Organizational Communications at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Courtney is currently working with the EQUAL Lab as lead consultant on a project exploring how faculty research is influenced by unnamed ‘stakeholders’ and possibly generating inequality among growers in New York state and beyond. Courtney was engaged as an expert researcher of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in organizational systems to map relationships between faculty and their stakeholders. The results of this project will inform DEI practices in the Plant Breeding & Genetics section, and extend our understanding of who faculty of plant breeding and genetics identify as stakeholders.
![](https://blogs.cornell.edu/tufanlab/files/2024/05/Jaron-2-800x800.jpg)
Jaron Porciello, Associate Professor of the Practice (Information & Data Science)
Jaron Porciello is an interdisciplinary researcher and Associate Professor of the Practice, Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society at the University of Notre Dame. She is the co-founder of the Juno Evidence Alliance which provides funders, governments, and scientists with evidence-informed decision-making for the symbiotic fields of agriculture, food and climate.
Jaron’s experience spans library and knowledge management, computation and research methods, and technology entrepreneurship. Through her research and programs, Jaron explores ways how to bring together existing research methods to produce new insights and analysis while ensuring that research and funding practices are equitable and focus on the areas of the greatest need.
She has created and led transformative relationships with academic, funding, government, publisher, and multilateral organizations, including Ceres2030: Sustainable Solutions to End Hunger, a global effort to coordinate G-7 donor decision-making in the international effort to end hunger and transform the lives of the world’s poorest people (Sustainable Development Goal 2), and Hesat2030: A Global Roadmap to End Hunger Nutritiously and Sustainably, a partnership with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and the Shamba Centre for Food and Climate.
She holds associate scientist appointments at Max Planck Institute for Human Development at the Center for Cognitive Rationality in Germany, and at the National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Information Science and Technologies and is current the co-founder of a AI start-up company, Havos.Ai. She lives in Ithaca, New York with her family.
![](https://blogs.cornell.edu/tufanlab/files/2024/05/RubinDeborah-copy-800x800.jpg)
Deborah (Dee) Rubin, Co-director of Cultural Practice, LLC
Dee is connected to the lab mainly via the Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement (ILCI) project. She co-founded Cultural Practice determined to use anthropology, with its focus on context and cultural knowledge, to improve outcomes in international development. Dee works closely with groups leading the gender and agriculture development agenda, including USAID, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She is a core team member of the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project (GAAP2), led by IFPRI, and has shaped the qualitative research supporting the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and WEAI for Value Chains (WEAI4VC).
As co-lead of the cross-cutting themes team in the Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement, Dee coordinates activities focused on gender, youth, resilience, diversity and nutrition.
Dee enjoys engaging the next generation of agricultural researchers to address gender issues and adopt mixed methods. She has worked extensively with both the land grant and private university communities, evaluating USAID-funded agricultural research grants and leading a team of agricultural scientists to identify new priorities for the agency’s investments in agriculture and natural resource management.
Dee holds a doctorate in anthropology from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Brown University. She is proficient in Swahili and French.
![](https://blogs.cornell.edu/tufanlab/files/2024/10/Chiedozie-1-800x800.png)
Chiedozie Egesi, CEO of National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI), Nigeria
Chiedozie Egesi is a renowned plant geneticist and agricultural scientist with a focus on crop improvement for food security in sub-Saharan Africa. He specializes in the genetic enhancement of cassava, a key staple crop, and has played a pivotal role in advancing cassava breeding through the use of modern biotechnological tools. Chiedozie serves as the director/CEO of the Nigerian NARS focused on root & tuber crops (NRCRI), as a consultant scientist at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), and is an adjunct professor in plant breeding & genetics at Cornell. He is heavily involved in agricultural development, and holds leadership roles in various international agricultural initiatives; he was previously the director of the NextGen Cassava project. His work aims to boost crop resilience, productivity, and nutritional quality, ultimately benefiting smallholder farmers across Africa.
Chiedozie engages with the EQUAL Lab via the RTB Breeding and Muhogo Bora projects.