Dr. Fang Wang
Dr. Fang Wang was a postdoc research associate in the lab whose work focused on powdery scab and developing a quantitative bruise protocol.
Dr. Heather Tuttle
Dr. Heather Tuttle earned her PhD from the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program. Her work focused on using genebank data to describe potato diversity.
Amy Hatchner
Amy served as our Lab Coordinator, overseeing lab scheduling, communications, outreach initiatives, and data organization, as well as designing project materials.
Dr. Xiaoxi Meng
Dr. Xiaoxi Meng was a postdoc in the lab whose work focused on bioinformatics in support of diploid breeding. She is currently a Bioinformatic Scientist at St. Jude Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Husain Agha
Dr. Husain Agha earned his PhD from the Plant and Microbial Sciences Program. His work focused on understanding the effects of selection, plasticity, and ploidy in potato. He is currently a postdoc in the Emily Josephs’ lab at MSU.
Dr. Nicole Mihelich
Dr. Nicole Mihelich earned her PhD from the Applied Plant Science Program. Her work focused on characterizing and identifying fine fescue species for use in turf grass breeding. She was coadvised by Dr. Eric Watkins. She is currently a molecular sweet corn and vegetable breeder with Syngenta.
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.