Michael Miller

Michael graduated from the Applied Plant Sciences program with his M.S. in the summer of 2022. He developed an R package called TubAR (Tuber Analysis in R) for quantitative phenotyping using machine learning and image analysis. He is now working for Seneca Foods as a research technician with their breeding program.

Rachel Figueroa

Rachel was a part of our team as a researcher 2. She investigated disease resistance in potatoes through DNA-based markers and managed our growth chambers and greenhouse. She is currently the assistant market manager for the Dane County Farmers’ Market.

Katelyn Filbrandt

Katelyn was the team’s lab manager from 2017-2021. She worked on virus eradication using tissue culture to clean up the potato germplasm of 39 varieties from the previous breeding program. She also assisted in disease control, genotyping, and field work for the breeding program. She has continued her work with tissue culture after recently moving to Michigan.

Dr. Cari Schmitz Carley

Dr. Cari Schmitz Carley worked on automated image analysis and breeding and evaluating new potato cultivars. She has recently moved on to Aardevo to breed diploid potatoes.

Colin Jones

Colin was a graduate student working on a M.S. in Applied Plant Sciences with a minor in Sustainable Agricultural Systems. His thesis work studies nitrogen use efficiency in potato. Colin will be moving on to study natural strands of hemp as a researcher in the Michaels Lab.

John Larsen

John Larsen was a researcher in Shannon Lab, and graduate of the University of Minnesota who majored in History, with a focus on the weaponization of food. John’s duties in the lab consisted of managing and running Shannon Lab’s tissue culture bank, greenhouse planning and management, and was the lab’s in-house cider maker.

Previous Undergraduates

Adalyn Pederson

Adalyn is a sophomore studying chemical engineering with an interest in the environment. After working hard in the potato field, she has moved on to pursue opportunities in her major field of study.

Adynn Stedillie

Adynn is a Plant Science major with an interest in sustainable, international agriculture. Currently, they are an intern with the Grossman lab, working on cover crop - soil interactions.

Ben Leiran

Ben worked with our lab in the Spring of 2022. He graduated with a B.S. in physics with a bological emphasis.

Nhung Pham

Nhung was in the our lab in the Spring of 2019 and was working toward obtaining a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics. While in the lab, she worked on a diploid GWAS experiment and did some greenhouse work.

Nansea Ji

Nansea was in the lab in the Spring of 2019 and worked on a diploid potato GWAS experiment. She majors in Biology and plans on going to medical school in the future.

Akpevwe Ikoba

Akpevwe worked with us in the summer of 2018. She tested infertility between potato cultivars and a wild species we use for breeding, data manipulation, and some greenhouse work. We were recently notified that she will be attending the University of Colorado to study cardiovascular aging.

Poh Leng

Poh Leng worked with Husain on the diploid project. She focused on pollen viability in the IVP101 lines and how that influences dihaploid extraction rates.

Sophia Fitzcollins

Sophia Fitzcollins was with the lab as an undergraduate research assistant from the Fall of 2018 to the Spring of 2020. She graduated with a B.S. in Plant Science and a minor in Architecture. She assisted with greenhouse maintenance as well as mixing media and transplanting. In her spare time Sophy likes to learn new languages and read books.

Thomas McGehee

Thomas McGehee was an undergraduate student studying Art and Genetics in the College of Biological Sciences. He joined the Shannon Lab in 2019 as a Field and Lab Assistant. He really enjoyed watering and caring for the plants and helping out in the field. Although he is unsure where his future will take him, his experiences in the Shannon lab have changed his perspective towards plant breeding and opened his eyes to the many rewarding applications of genetics.

Laura Schulz

Laura Schulz is majoring in Plant Science and Bioproducts & Biosystems Engineering. In the Shannon Lab, she worked on a UROP related to creating a population of diploid potatoes, and also assisted with transplanting, watering, and collecting pollen. In her spare time, Laura enjoys gardening and spending time with her cats.

Elijah Lartey

Elijah is majoring in Plant Science after originally attending the U of M for music in 2015. They became interested in ecology after working for the Youth Conservation Corps of Minnesota in 2014. After that they picked up gardening as a hobby and eventually decided to study the subject in 2018. In their free time they still like to make music as well as bake and be a tea snob.