People

Principal Investigator

Peter Morrell

Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn | Twitter Bluesky ORCiD 2009 — Present

Peter Morrell is a Professor at the University of Minnesota, Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics.

Postdoctoral Scholars

Luis Willian Pacheco Arge

Google Scholar | Github 2023 — Present

Willian is a postdoc in the lab co-advised with Bob Stupar.

Roland Akakpo

Google Scholar | Github 2022 — Present

Roland Akakpo is a postdoctoral scholar co-advised with Maria Muñoz-Amatriain. He is working on thermotolerance in cowpea.

Graduate Students

Undergraduates

Derell Scott

Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn | Twitter ORCiD 2021 — Present

Derell Scott is an undergraduate student primarily involved in biocomputing tasks.

Elaine Lee

Github | LinkedIn 2021 — Present

Elaine is a chemical engineering student with an interest in computing.

Jacob Pacheco

Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn | Twitter ORCiD 2022 — Present

Jacob Pacheco is an undergraduate student primarily involved in biocomputing tasks.

Nadia Janis

Github | LinkedIn 2021 — Present

Nadia has worked as an undergraduate student in the lab, including a lot of heavy lifting in the greenhouse and computational analysis. She completed a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science at University of Minnesota in May 2021.

Nathan Liang

Github 2021 — Present

Nathan is an undergraduate in the lab working on computational projects.

Former Lab Members

Abby Proulx, 2017 — 2018 , Github

Undergraduate student

Amber Eule-Nashoba, 2011 , Website | Google Scholar | LinkedIn

Rotation student

Ana Maria Poets [Gonzales], 2010 — 2015 , Website | Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn

PhD Applied Plant Sciences 2015. Currently a Genetics Project Lead at Syngenta.

Ashley Rozmarin, 2012 — 2015
Undergraduate student

Bailey Brandel, 2019 , Github | LinkedIn

Undergraduate student

Beau Miller, 2011 — 2012
Undergraduate student

Benjamin Weil, 2014 — 2015
Undergraduate student

Brian Shaw, 2018 — 2019 , Github | LinkedIn

Brian is an undergraduate student studying Genetics, Cellular Biology, and Development (GCD). He is completing a master’s degree in Education and is currently a science teacher at Hope Community Academy in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Chaochih Liu, 2017 — 2023 , Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn | Twitter ORCiD

Chaochih completed a PhD in 2023. Her research combined bioinformatics, population genetics, and plant evolution. She is now a Research & Development Senior Bioinformatics Scientist at PepsiCo.

Colin Pierce, 2015 — 2017 , Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn

Graduate student in biochemistry at the University of Minnesota.

Connor Depies, 2016 — 2018 , Github | LinkedIn
Undergraduate student

Corey Carter, 2016 — 2019 , Github | LinkedIn

Undergraduate student. Corey is now a software engineer at NASA.

Diego Coelho, 2010
Undergraduate student

Emily Dittmar, 2018 — 2022 , Website | Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn | Twitter ORCiD

Emily is a genomics scientist at Syngenta.

Emily Vonderharr, 2017 — 2019 , Github | LinkedIn

Undergraduate student. Emily is now a “Creative” with Apple Inc.

Erica Sun, 2016 — 2018 , Github | LinkedIn

Undergraduate student. Erica transferred to Boston University.

Erin Treiber, 2011

Rotation student

Felipe Reyes Gaibor, 2015 — 2016 , Github
Undergraduate student

Giulia Frascarelli, 2019 — 2020 , Github

Giulia completed a PhD at the Polytechnic University of Marche, Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences. Her research is primarily on common bean, involving applications of population genetics, phylogenetics, and bioinformatics. She is currently a postdoc in Italy.

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Undergraduate student

Kelly Tweito, 2013 , LinkedIn
Undergraduate student

Kevin Volz, 2010 , Github | LinkedIn
Undergraduate student

Kiran Seth, 2009 — 2015

Former research associate. Soybean environmental association and SNP annotation.

Li Lei, 2015 — 2019 , Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn | Twitter ORCiD

Former postdoc. Currently a bioinformatician at JGI.

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Undergraduate student

Malik Samuel, 2017 — 2018 , Github | LinkedIn

Malik is a previous undergraduate student who hopes to study mechanical engineering.

Margie Stringfield, 2013
Undergraduate student

Paul Hoffman, 2014 — 2017 , Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn | Twitter ORCiD

Paul is the bioinformatics specialist. He is interested in population structure, plant pathology and immunology, and computational biology. He is currently a bioinformatician at the New York Genome Center.

Richard Trantow, 2015 — 2017
Undergraduate student

Samuel Hamann, 2019 — 2021 , Github | LinkedIn

Sam worked as an undergraduate and as a technician in the lab. Most of his efforts involved computing, but also some seed processing and greehouse work. He completed a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science in 2020. He is currently a computer programmer for a logistics company.

Skylar Wyant, 2015 — 2019 , Github | LinkedIn

Skylar is a former undergraduate student and technician interested in bioinformatics and population genetics. She is currently a PhD student at University of California Irvine.

Tom Kono, 2011 — 2016 , Website | Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn

PhD Applied Plant Sciences 2016; currently a Research Informatics Solutions Analyst at the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute. Tom is interested in soybean genomics, wild barley SNP diversity, and SNP annotation.

Zhou Fang, 2009 — 2013 , Website | Google Scholar | LinkedIn

PhD Plant Biological Sciences 2013. Currently a data scientist at Syngenta, Raleigh-Durham, NC. Formerly a postdoctoral scholar with Jim Holland at North Carolina State University.