People

Principal Investigator

Peter Morrell

Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn | Twitter

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

Postdoctoral Scholars

Emily Dittmar

Website | Google Scholar | Github | Twitter

Emily is a postdoctoral scholar co-advised with Dr. John Burke.

Roland Akakpo

Google Scholar | Github

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

Graduate Students

Chaochih Liu

Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn | Twitter

Chaochih is a graduate student and has been investigating genomic structural variations that contribute to locally adaptive processes in barley. She is interested in bioinformatics, population genetics, and plant evolution.

Giulia Frascarelli

Github

Giulia is a visiting graduate student from the Polytechnic University of Marche, Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences. She primarily works on common bean and is interested in population genetics, phylogenetics and bioinformatics.

Undergraduates

Derell Scott

Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn | Twitter

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

Elaine Lee

Github | LinkedIn

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

Jacob Pacheco

Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn | Twitter

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

Nadia Janis

Github | LinkedIn

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

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.


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 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

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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

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

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.


Honorary Lab Members

Justin Anderson

Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn

Justin is a senior scientist in statistics and data science with BASF based in the Netherlands.

Mikey Kantar

Website | Google Scholar | Github

Mikey is an assistant professor at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

Current Collaborators

Brian J. Steffenson

University of Minnesota


Gary J. Muehlbauer

University of Minnesota


Justin C. Fay

University of Rochester


Kevin P. Smith

University of Minnesota


Robert M. Stupar

University of Minnesota


Scott Jackson

Bayer Crop Science


Wayne Parrott

University of Georgia


Past Collaborators

Brandon S. Gaut

University of California at Irvine


Concepcion M. Diez

Universidad de Córdoba


James R. Mickelson

University of Minnesota


James H. Orf

University of Minnesota


Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra

University of California at Davis


Michael T. Clegg

University of California at Irvine


Molly E. McCue

University of Minnesota


See more photos of the Morrell Lab