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Research Interests:

My research interests lie in bioinformatics, software development, and education. Currently, I am working on methods to efficiently assemble and annotate several hundred wild grass relatives of maize and sorghum through the PanAnd Project. I also work with the Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement (ILCI). My involvement at ILCI includes working with centers of innovation to develop genomic analytical pipelines to be used with cloud computing and improving TASSEL to work with plant breeders across the ILCI network. Additionally, I am the creator and maintainer of various R packages and web applications, including rTASSEL, an R front-end for TASSEL. 

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Before coming to Cornell, my research focused on bioinformatics approaches to microbial interactions in next-generation lignocellulosic feedstocks and their impact on biomass development.
 

Education:

•    Ph.D. in Biology, South Dakota State University, Brookings, South Dakota

•    M.S. in Plant Science, South Dakota State University, Brookings, South Dakota