Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Bioagricultural Sciences and Pest Management & Department of Cell and Molecular Biology

Research Summary: Defense responses to pathogens are energetically costly to plants. In many plant species, constitutive and systemic activation of defenses by chemical or genetic approaches leads to reduced losses to disease, but also frequently to stunted growth and reduced seed yield. I use plant genetics to understand how the different plant hormones naturally orchestrate the balance between growth and defense in plants, with the goal of developing advanced crops with high yield and high resistance to pathogens, for use in sustainable agricultural systems.