North American Biotechnologist Council 28th Annual Meeting

Pamela Soltis University of Florida	Pamela S. Soltis is a Distinguished Professor and Curator of Molecular Systematics and Evolutionary Genetics in the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida. She received a B.A. from Central College in Pella, Iowa, and the Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. She joined the UF faculty in 2000, after 14 years at Washington State University. Dr. Soltis’s research is motivated by her passion for biodiversity, especially plants. She uses genomic methods and computational modeling to understand patterns and processes of plant evolution and identify conservation priorities. Much of her current work focuses on plant diversity and conservation in Florida, but her research has taken her throughout the US and Canada and to Costa Rica, New Caledonia, Spain, China, and Brazil. She is Director of UF’s Biodiversity Institute and has served her profession as President of the Botanical Society of America, President of the Society of Systematic Biologists, a Council Member of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists and the Society for the Study of Evolution, and an associate editor of numerous journals. She is particularly interested in connecting heterogeneous data to gain new insight into plant evolution and works with large collaborative networks.
Doreen Main Washington State University	Doreen (Dorrie) Main is a Professor of Bioinformatics in the Department of Horticulture at Washington State University. She received her MS in Information Management and a PhD in Bioscience and Biotechnology from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland. For the last 15 years her research has largely focused on the development of sequence analysis pipelines, online informatics tools, and genomic, genetic and breeding databases to enable basic, translational and applied crop research. Her industry and federally supported program currently hosts databases for 25 crops including tree fruits, berries, cool season legumes and cotton using the generic, resource-efficient, open-source Tripal database platform.
TBA
Luca Comai University of California at Davis	Luca Comai is professor of Plant Biology at the Genome Center of the University of California at Davis. He has B.S. equivalent in agricultural sciences from the Universita' di Bologna, Italy, an M.S. in plant pathology from Washington State University, and a Ph.D. in plant pathology from UC Davis. In his Ph.D. thesis he elucidated the genetic basis of IAA production in bacteria, later found to be homologous to that encoded by Agrobacterium T-DNA. Dr. Comai joined the Calgene biotechnology startup as a scientist in 1981 where he worked on crop plant modification, providing the first demonstration that glyphosate resistance could be engineered through alteration of EPSP synthase. He joined the faculty at the University of Washington in 1990 where he initiated work on genetics and genomics of polyploidy, and co-developed TILLING with colleagues. Since joining UC Davis, he continues developing approaches to functional genomics and genome analysis, with an emphasis on function and regulation of chromosomes and polyploid genomes. Dr. Comai has authored over 100 publications, has an H impact factor of 63 and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Kiran Mysore Noble Foundation	Kiran Mysore is a Professor at the Plant Biology Division at the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation. He also holds Adjunct Professorship at the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology, Oklahoma State University. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore (India), Master’s degree in Horticulture at Clemson University and Ph.D. in Genetics at Purdue University in 1999. He did his postdoctoral training in plant genomics at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, Cornell University. His research interests center on molecular plant-microbe interactions and plant genetic resource development. He has published over 150 papers and book chapters.
Sally MacKenzie University of Nebraska	Sally Mackenzie is the Ralph and Alice Raikes Distinguished Chair of Plant Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Sally initiated her career at Purdue University in 1989, and joined the faculty at the University of Nebraska in 1999 in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture. Her laboratory research focuses on plant organellar properties that influence epigenetic behavior, and the exploitation of these interactions to induces changes in plant growth properties. Sally is a Quishi Chair Professor at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, and serves as President-elect for the American Society of Plant Biologists.
Jared Decker University of Missouri	Jared Decker is an assistant professor in the University of Missouri Division of Animal Science and Beef Genetics Extension Specialist. He also is a member of the Genetics Area Program and University of Missouri Informatics Institute. Decker received his B.S. from New Mexico State University, graduating with top honors. He majored in Animal Science with a minor in Biology. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri in Genetics, with a Ph.D. minor in Statistics. Jared is working to help stakeholders in the beef industry better understand the rapidly changing genetic technologies. His research focuses on understanding the history and selection of cattle breeds and improving the cost and accuracy of genomic prediction tests. He is active on social media and his website A Steak in Genomics.
Carolyn Lawrence-Dill Iowa State University	Carolyn Lawrence-Dill is an Associate Professor in the Department of Genetics, Development and Cell Biology at Iowa State university. She has devoted the last 15 years to developing computational systems/solutions that support the plant research community. Her work enables the use of existing and emerging knowledge to establish common standards and methods for data collection, integration, and sharing. Such efforts help to eliminate redundancy, improve the efficiency of current and future projects, and increase the availability of data and data analysis tools for plant biologists working in diverse crops across the world. Carolyn led the USDA’s maize model organism database MaizeGDB (http://maizegdb.org/) for a decade, currently coordinates the development of the information platform for the US maize Genomes to Fields Initiative (http://www.genomes2fields.org/), and is an active member of the community working to put in place methods for phenotype data access, analyses, and re-use. Carolyn has served in advisory roles as a member of the Maize Genetics Executive Committee (2014 chair), the iPlant/CyVerse Scientific Advisory Board, the maize nomenclature committee, the Legume Information System Working Group, the SoyBase Working Group, etc. To learn more about her contributions to plant biology and information access, visit https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=bHQPmtEAAAAJ&hl=en.
Steven White USDA ARS-Pullman	Stephen N. White is a Research Geneticist with the USDA-ARS Animal Disease Research Unit in Pullman, WA and is a member of the international Steering Committee for FAANG, the Functional Annotation of ANimal Genomes project. He also holds adjunct faculty appointments in the Department of Veterinary Microbiology & Pathology and the Center for Reproductive Biology at Washington State University. He earned a B.S. in Biology from Duke University, and then a Ph.D. in Genetics from Texas A&M University. His research focuses on genomics of susceptibility to infectious and inherited disease, genetics of complex traits, and development of applied genetic technologies for many ruminant livestock and other domestic animal species. Projects include scrapie resistance in domestic goats, sheep genes that restrict lentiviral replication and ovine progressive pneumonia, and a range of other topics in genetics of cattle, wild ruminants, and companion animals. To learn more about Dr. White, please visit: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3TBrXlMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Mark Lange Washington State University	Bernd Markus (“Mark”) Lange is currently an Associate Professor at the Institute of Biological Chemistry at Washington State University. He received an M.S. degree from the University of Bonn and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Munich, both in Germany. Following postdoctoral studies at the University of Tübingen (Germany) and Washington State University, Mark spent several years as a team leader in the biotechnology industry (working for Novartis, Syngenta and Diversa). In 2004, he joined the faculty at Washington State University and built a program focused on understanding metabolism in specialized plant cells that are responsible for the synthesis of essential oils, oleoresins, and pharmaceutically relevant natural products. Mark has directed biotechnological and more recently breeding efforts to develop mint cultivars with enhanced oil yield and composition. His laboratory is employing mathematical modeling to quantitatively describe oil and resin biosynthesis at various scales from individual genes or enzymes to entire plants.
Tim Paulitz USDA ARS-Pullman	Dr. Paulitz earned a BSc in Botany and a minor in Plant Pathology from California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, California in 1979. In 1984, he received a PhD in Plant Pathology from the University of California, Riverside. He was a visiting assistant professor at Colorado State University from 1984-1987 and a research associate with the USDA-ARS in Corvallis, Oregon from 1987-1989. He was professor at Macdonald College of McGill University in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec, Canada from 1989-2000. He is presently a research plant pathologist with the USDA-ARS Wheat Health, Genetics, and Quality Research Unit, at Washington State University in Pullman, WA. He investigates root diseases and soilborne pathogens of wheat, barley, Brassicas and other rotation crops, with an emphasis on fungi (Rhizoctonia, Pythium, and Fusarium) and nematodes (cereal cyst and root lesion). He has focused on the ecology, epidemiology, spatial analysis and molecular detection and quantification of soilborne pathogens, and the development of cultural management techniques for root diseases, especially in direct-seed systems. In the last 7 years, he has studied microbial communities in disease suppressive soils using next-generation sequencing. He is presently looking at the impacts of tillage, cultivars, glyphosate and other herbicides on microbial communities in wheat.
Larry Forney University of Idaho	Larry Forney is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Idaho. He is currently director of an NIH-funded Center of Biomedical Research Excellence and until recently was director of the Institute for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies (IBEST) at the University of Idaho. Prior to this he was professor of microbial ecology at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, associate director of the Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University, and a senior scientist at Synergen, Inc. His scientific expertise rests in the evolutionary ecology of prokaryotes and microbial community ecology. He has pioneered the development of molecular microbial ecology methods to understand the extent and distribution of microbial diversity, to characterize within species genetic diversity, and the evolution of novel microbial traits. His accomplishments in microbial evolution and ecology and scientific leadership have been recognized through various awards and by appointment as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Sindhuja Sankaran Washington State University	Sindhuja Sankaran joined Washington State University in 2013 as an Assistant professor in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering. She received a BS degree in Zoology, and MS in both Environmental Science and Environmental Engineering. She received her PhD in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (2009) from North Dakota State University and was also postdoctoral associate at University of Florida until 2013. Her research interests are towards advanced sensing techniques for high-throughput crop phenotyping. Her work also involves development and characterization of opto-electronic and biomimetic chemical sensor technologies for non-invasive, rapid and continuous crop monitoring applications. In 2015, she organized a conference on ‘Advances in field-based high-throughput phenotyping and data management’ in collaboration with collegues from WSU and other U.S. institutions.
Edgar Spalding University of Wisconsin	Edgar Spalding received a B.Sc.H. degree from Acadia University in 1985 and a Ph.D. in biology from Penn State in 1990. He conducted postdoctoral research in plant membrane transport at Yale University until beginning an assistant professor position in the Department of Botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1994, where he is now a full professor. Dr. Spalding considers himself to be a plant physiologist with a penchant for getting computers to measure details of seedling growth and development, especially when the results can be used to learn about gene functions or basic physiological processes such as auxin transport and signaling.
Jeff White USDA ARS-Arizona	Jeff White has a BA in Biology from Harvard and a PhD in Botany from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Research Plant Physiologist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service and is stationed at the Arid Land Agricultural Research Center near Phoenix, Arizona. Previous to joining USDA, Dr. White worked as a crop physiologist at the International Potato Center (CIP; Lima, Peru), the Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT; Cali, Colombia), and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT; El Batan, Mexico). Dr. White is a Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy. Dr. White has a long interest in the understanding physiological and genetic mechanisms of adaptation to temperature and water deficits. He pioneered inclusion of genetic information in ecophysiological models. Current research emphasizes development of high-throughput systems suitable for phenotyping large populations in field trials under water deficit and high temperature stresses.
Seungho Cho Monsanto	Seungho Cho is a Varietal Crop Germplasm Discovery Scientist at Monsanto. He received Ph.D. in Genetics and Cell Biology from Washington State University in 2003 for his study on fungal disease resistance in chickpea. After postdoc research in Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics focused on molecular genomics of cereal crops, he joined BASF Plant Science in 2006 and worked on molecular genomics platform development and HTP lab operation. In 2010, he joined Monsanto as Molecular Breeder specialized in cotton and now supporting all varietal crops in the areas of trait genetics and breeding technology discovery.
Rollin Sears Kansas State/Syngenta	Rollin G. Sears retired from Syngenta in 2015. He was a Senior Science Fellow and Senior Manager for Syngenta, leading research and development for cereals in North America. As a wheat breeder, he focused on improved wheat production efficiency through the release of improved wheat cultivars. Dr. Sears has been able to combine both high yield and improved milling and baking properties into widely adapted wheat cultivars in North America. Rollie earned his degrees at Montana State University (MS) and Oregon State University (PhD) and joined Kansas State University as an assistant professor in 1980, rising to professor before joining Syngenta in 1999. He has received the Kansas Farm Bureau’s Distinguished Service to Agriculture Award, The Kansas Association of Wheat Growers Wheat Man of the Year award, Distinguished Graduate Faculty Award from Kansas State University, the American Society of Agronomy Agronomic Research Award and the 2007 Oregon State University Distinguished Service Award. Oregon State University School of Agriculture recognized him with their Alumni Legacy award in 2013. Dr. Sears is a Fellow of both the American Society of Agronomy and Crop Science Society of America.
Henry Nguyen University of Missouri	Henry T. Nguyen is Curators’ Professor of Plant Sciences and Endowed Chair in Soybean Genomics and Biotechnology. He served as Director of the National Center for Soybean Biotechnology from 2003 to 2015. Prior to the current position, he was the Board of Regents’ Paul Whitfield Horn professor at Texas Tech University with a joint appointment with Texas A&M University. He has a distinguished career in plant genetics and biotechnology and is internationally recognized for his research in plant adaptation to stress environments. His research team conducts genetic analysis of major traits and applies molecular marker technology to soybean improvement. Dr. Nguyen has gained recognition through many awards such as the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Young Investigator Award and the Young Crop Scientist Award. He was elected as Fellow of the Crop Science Society of America, Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has served on several editorial boards and published more than 250 refereed articles and 35 book chapters. He chairs the Abiotic Stress Workshop at the International Plant and Animal Genome Conference. He coordinates a large scale soybean genome sequencing project aimed toward the development of next generation genomics-assisted trait discovery and breeding strategies.