Jocelyn Bullock

Jocelyn Bullock

BRANDOLOGY 101: Social Media Platforms and Launching into Your Career

Bullock is a seasoned educational professional with more than 17 years of experience in student success, educational access and opportunity, conflict resolution/mediation, DEI, and research.

When speaking, Bullock helps those in the audience learn to leverage their sphere of influence to strengthen their voices as advocates for a brighter tomorrow. She holds a B.A. in Liberal Studies, a Master of Arts in Counseling and Conflict Resolution, and a Master of Public Administration with an emphasis in Urban Management.

Bullock is a lifelong learner working toward a Ph.D. in Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication.

As an agricultural enthusiast, Bullock enjoys providing pathways for children in the urban core to gain fluency in STEM, specifically agriculture and natural resources. In January of 2023, Bullock presented her first TedX Talk entitled, “Parallels of Hate: Arachnophobia vs. Xenophobia.” In her spare time, she enjoys listening to music on her record player, officiating weddings, and traveling.

Katayoon Dehesh

Katayoon (Katie) Dehesh

How Chloroplasts Control Plant Stress Responses

Director, Institute for Integrative Genome Biology; Ernst and Helen Leibacher Endowed Chair; German National Academy of Sciences; Professor of Molecular Biochemistry; Department of Botany & Plant Sciences, University of California Riverside

The Dehesh Lab is focused on understanding how organisms perceive and respond to developmental and environmental cues through tightly regulated inter- and intra-cellular communication networks.

The overarching objective of the Dehesh Lab’s research is to define the nature of retrograde signals, their mode of perception, and the mechanism of signal transduction to optimize adaptive responses. In this quest, we have identified methylerythritol cyclodiphosphate (MEcPP), an intermediate of methylerythritol phosphate (MEP) pathway, as a stress specific retrograde signaling metabolite. MEP is an essential pathway present not only in plants but also in most eubacteria and in apicomplexa that biosynthesize isoprenoids in their non-green plastid-type apicoplast.

Dehesh Lab
Joseph Gage

Joseph Gage

Genotype-Environment Interactions at the Molecular Level: Surveying Gene Expression Across Space and Time

Assistant Professor, Crop and Soil Sciences, North Carolina State University

Gage’s research program is focused on linking crop genomic and phenomics to understand how to develop more resilient and productive crop varieties. Current projects include studying how sequence variation controls gene regulation; how gene regulation contributes to genotype-by-environment interactions; and novel methods for processing and interpreting high throughput phenotyping data.

Gage's Bio
Jocelyn Bullock

Klaus Koehler

Careers in R&D in the AG Industry, an example from Corteva Agriscience

North American Logistics Lead for Corn Breeding, Corteva Agriscience™

After earning a PhD in Plant Breeding at the University of Hohenheim, Germany in 1986, Koehler began his professional career at KWS Saat AG in Germany. In 1988, he moved to United States to establish a proprietary corn-breeding program as Director of Research for KWS Seeds. In 1999 Koehler became Global Corn Breeding Leader in AgrEvo/Aventis Crop Science (later acquired by Bayer Crop Science). Here he directed corn-breeding programs in Europe, North America, and Asia, North Africa and South America as well as a transgenic trait development facility in Champaign IL.

In 2006, Koehler joined Dow AgroSciences. He became the Global Temperate Corn Breeding Leader in 2009, developing the corn breeding strategy for North America and Europe. In 2014, he became R&D Director leading the North American Plant Breeding organization.

In 2018, Koehler became the North American Logistics Lead for Corn Breeding at Corteva Agriscience, based in Johnston IA, responsible for implementation of new strategies in NA Corn Breeding for Corteva. Koehler also led the late-stage testing team and the NA silage breeding efforts. Recently Koehler became the Global Talent Development Lead for Seed Product Development in Corteva R&D.

Koehler served for several years in the North American Plant Breeders Association (NAPB), recently as president. He currently serves in its Commercial Plant Breeding Committee. He serves in the Scientific Advisory Group of the Better Banana Breeding Project, East Africa, funded by the BMG Foundation.

Jon Massman

Jon Massman

Advancing Methods of Phenotypic Evaluation to Accelerate Gains in Plant Breeding Programs

Varietal Technology Lead for North American Plant Breeding, Corteva Agriscience™

Massman is a Corteva Agriscience laureate and currently serves as the Varietal Technology Lead for North American Plant Breeding. In that role, he leads a team responsible for identifying, investigating, and deploying new enabling technologies that ultimately result in driving faster genetic gain in the breeding programs. Massman has a B.S. from Iowa State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.

Jason Rauscher

Jason Rauscher

Introduction to the Plant Sciences Symposia Series

Academic Relations Manager, Corteva Agriscience™

Rauscher received his Ph.D. in Plant Evolutionary Genetics from Washington University in St. Louis, and postdoctoral training at Cornell University. He is a passionate science and education advocate leveraging over 20 years of experience in academia, research, secondary education and industry to foster mutually beneficial interactions between academia and the private sector in the agricultural and biological sciences. Rauscher is currently responsible for managing the Plant Sciences Symposia Series, which supports a network of graduate student organized symposia at over 30 universities and research centers around the world each year. Responsibilities also include management of the New Frontiers in Applied Science conference series, and support for the Corteva internship program for undergraduate and graduate interns working within R&D.

Jinliang Yang

Jinliang Yang

Integrative Omics for Tomorrow’s Nitrogen-Resilient Crop

Assistant Professor, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Yang’s research focuses on quantitative genetics and statistical genomics of maize and its wild relatives, from historical domestication to future improvement. In particular, we study the genetic and epigenetic inheritance patterns during the maize domestication and improvement processes.

The Yang lab focuses on bridging the gap between genotypes and phenotypes. At a broader scale, his group is keen to integrate various large-scale biological data such as phenomics, genomics, transcriptomics, methylomics datasets and functional annotations to boost the power of Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) and Genomic Selection (GS).

Yang's Bio

Student Speakers

Zachery Shomo

Zachery Shomo

Doctoral Candidate, Biochemistry, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Aastha Gautam

Aastha Gautam

M.S. Student, Department of Plant Science, South Dakota State University 

Nate Korth

Nate Korth

Postdoctoral Researcher, Complex Biosystems, Food Science and Technology, University of Nebraska–Lincoln 

Anil Kumar Nalini Chandran

Anil Kumar Nalini Chandran

Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska–Lincoln