Faculty Researchers
Molecular Plant Sciences Faculty Researchers
Laura Bartley
Molecular genetics, systems biology, and biochemistry to develop and test hypotheses of grass-diverged aspects of cell wall content biosynthesis and regulation.
Philip Bates
Biochemistry and metabolism of plant oils and membrane lipids; Lipid metabolic flux; Engineering plant oils for increased nutrition or chemical feedstocks, and biofuels.
Jacob (Jake) Blauer
Plant physiology with an emphasis on potato postharvest physiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology and potato variety development. Research interests focus on environmental influence on potato production and quality to improve germplasm, grower practices, and sustainability.
Robert Brueggemann
Molecular genetics, genomics and functional analysis tools to explore the mechanisms underlying biotic and abiotic stress resistances in barley.
Ian Burke
Herbicide biochemistry, physiology, and fate; physiological and genetic bases for herbicide resistance in weedy plants.
Jeremiah W. Busch
The evolution of self-incompatibility mechanisms and plant population genetics
Kimberly Garland-Campbell
Genetics and breeding of wheat, especially club wheat. Research involves quantitative genetic approaches to discern the genetic and environmental response of wheat to stripe rust, soil borne diseases, and cold stress.
Arron Carter
Winter wheat breeding and genetics. Research involves genetic characterization of biotic and abiotic stress resistance using next-generation genomics techniques, as well as using high-throughput phenotyping methods to more accurately predict wheat performance
Weidong Chen
Interactions between legume hosts and fungal pathogens, molecular mechanisms of fungal pathogenesis, fungal effectors that mediate host response to infection
Asaph Cousins
Plant metabolism and physiology; plant energy metabolism; carbon and oxygen isotope exchange in plants.
David Crowder
Understanding how farming practices, land-use, and abiotic conditions impact insect communities and plant interactions
Stephen Ficklin
System genetics
Maren L. Friesen
Biological nitrogen-fixation, evolutionary ecology, population genomics, mathematical modeling.
David Gang
Plant Specialized Metabolism
Kulvinder S. Gill
Molecular basis of chromosome pairing control; genome organization and amplification; distribution of genes and recombination; characterization of agronomically important traits.
Cynthia Gleason
Plant parasitic nematodes, root-knot nematodes, interactions with host plants.
Hanjo Hellmann
The ubiquitin proteasome pathway; vitamin B6 biosynthesis
Scot Hulbert
Molecular genetics and evolution of the interactions between pathogens and plants
Ananth Kalyanaraman
Computational biology and bioinformatics; high-performance computing; combinatorial pattern matching.
ChulHee Kang
Tailoring lignin composition in genome-edited sorghum for lignocelluosic biofuel, Cellular calcium regulation mechanism, Bioremediation of the major organic pollutants.
Helmut Kirchhoff
Photosynthesis, Molecular Architecture and Dynamics of Photosynthetic Membranes.
Michael Knoblauch
Cell biology and the physiology of plant tissues, especially the phloem.
Mark Lange
Use and development of tools for the integration of post-genomic technologies (microarrays, proteomics, metabolite profiling) to study the global regulation of metabolic pathways; particular interest in isoprenoid metabolism.
Norman Lewis
Biochemistry of plant phenolics; biochemistry of plant cell-wall synthesis and unique plant constituents; effects of gravity on metabolic pathways in plants.
Michael Neff
Interactions between various signaling pathways that modulate plant development.
Tom Okita
Biochemistry of starch synthesis and protein localization; metabolic genetic engineering of plants for increased productivity; mRNA localization and the role of the cytoskeleton and endoplasmic reticulum.
Hanu R. Pappu
Virus genomics and proteomics, plant-virus interactions, molecular epidemiology, crop biotechnology/virus resistant transgenic plants.
B. W. “Joe” Poovaiah
Molecular and biochemical aspects of calcium/calmodulin-mediated signaling in plants.
Michael Pumphrey
Spring wheat breading and genetics. Genetic dissection of disease resistance, grain quality, and abiotic stress tolerance traits are major research areas.
Eric H. Roalson
Molecular phylogenetics, genomics, and evolutionary origins of characters of interest, notably photosynthetic pathway novelties.
Cecilia Rodriguez-Furlan
Molecular mechanisms regulating plant endomembrane protein traffic, their relevance in development, and during environmental stress responses.
Sanja Roje
Metabolism of tetrahydrofolate-bound one-carbon units in plastids; biosynthesis of riboflavin in plants.
Karen Sanguinet
Molecular genetics and physiology of root development in the context of the cell wall, hormone crosstalk, and abiotic stress.
Andrei Smertenko
Plant growth, cell division, cell wall synthesis, drought tolerance.
Camille Steber
Hormonal regulation of seed dormancy and germination. The molecular mechanisms controlling preharvest sprouting and late maturity alpha-amylase (LMA) in wheat, two causes of low falling numbers.
Tarah Sullivan
Soil-plant-microbiome interactions, metals biogeochemistry and bioremediation, soil microbiome factors linking soil health, crop success, and human micronutrient nutrition.
Kiwamu Tanaka
Molecular plant-microbe interactions and plant innate immunity
Mechthild Tegeder
Molecular and physiological mechanisms of plant metabolite partitioning with focus on nitrogen and carbon transport. Importance of allocation processes for plant nutrient use efficiency, productivity and nutritional quality.
Linda S. Thomashow
Genetics, biochemistry and physiology of plant-microbe interactions; plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria; rhizosphere microbiology and ecology; mechanisms of gene regulation and expression; microbial genomics.
John J. Wyrick
Functional genomics; regulation of gene expression; chromatin structure; covalent histone modifications.
Zhiwu Zhang
Research focusing on developing statistical methods and computing tools for genomic research and applications.
In Memoriam