SOAR-REEU Student Ty Joins The Team, June, 2025.
We are thrilled to welcome Ty Watkins to work with us for the summer. Ty is joining us through the Undergraduate Research and Extension Experiences (REEU) summer research program, which aims to provide hands-on experience to students that are interested in agriculture and plant and soil sciences. Ty is from Washington D.C. and just graduated from Virginia State University. She is in the process of deciding what type of continuing education she wants to do next. In our program she will be working on characterizing allelic variation in shattering genes of interest. Welcome Ty!
Planting Season Has Begun, May, 2025.
And we're off! The 2025 planting season is off to a good start; we're getting pretty good at this whole thing. This year at the NCROC we've planted a variety trial, many populations, and a seed increase for one of our most promising lines. We're excited for the season as we welcome back our undergraduate workers from last year, Nathanial and Joe. We hope your season is smooth and productive!
Kat Schmidt Joins the Program! January, 2025.
We are excited to welcome our newest graduate student, Kat Schmidt, to the program! Kat is from Iowa and has a long history of working in agriculture and research. She received her BA in Biology and Statistics from Swarthmore college in 2024, where she studied planarian aging and Arabidopsis heat stress response. In our program she will work on whole genome resequencing of wild rice as well as working to characterize indigenous agricultural systems. We are happy to have her!