Personnel

Sally Mackenzie

Principal Investigator
Sally Mackenzie is the Lloyd and Dottie Huck Chair for Plant Functional Genomics in the Departments of Biology and Plant Science since 2017. Before that time, the Mackenzie lab was located at the University of Nebraska, where we helped found the start up company EpiCrop Technologies to seek out commercial value from our research.

Robersy Sanchez

Associate Research Professor
Robersy oversees all computational biology and biostatistics research in our group. He has recently developed a pipeline for genome-wide DNA methylation analysis called Methyl-IT.

Hardik Kundariya

Researcher
Hardik oversees the Arabidopsis genetics of the lab, and investigates the role of the RNA-dependent DNA methylation pathway and other methylation and histone modification machinery in epigenomic reprogramming in plants under stress.

Ryan Sebring

Plant Researcher
I received my Ph.D. in Applied Horticulture/Horticulture Operations from Penn State University in 2021 and joined the Mackenzie lab in 2022. I manage the plants in the research greenhouse, and I am also working on finding realtime PCR biomarkers which indicate a plant’s potential to improve growth when used as a grafted rootstock.

Ha Eun Jeh

Ph.D. candidate
I am a PhD student in Plant Biology Graduate Program in Huck Institutes of Life Sciences. I studied biological sciences for my undergraduate degree at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. I am studying the effect of sensory plastid signals in Arabidopsis.

Isaac Dopp

Ph.D. candidate
Isaac is a graduate student whose research is focused on plant signaling that mediates stress response in plants.

Alenka Hafner

Ph.D. candidate
I joined the Plant Biology PhD program at Penn State after finishing my BA in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge. I am interested in the interplay of epigenetic memory, phenotypic plasticity, and stress adaptation.

Visiting Scholars

Akshay U Nair

Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, 2022-23
He is a PhD student at the Department of Biology, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Tirupati. His interest lies in understanding the regulation of abiotic stress memory in plants.

Past Post-Doctoral Researchers

Xiaodong Yang
Professor, Yangzhou University, Jiangsu, China

Jesus Alonso Beltran
Research associate, University of California, Riverside

Yashi Wamboldt
Molecular Biologist, EpiCrop Technologies, Lincoln, NE

John Laurie
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Alberta

Jiantao Yu
Lecturer, College of Information Engineering, Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, China

Ying-Zhi Xu
University of Arkansas

Ido Keren
CUNY Stony Brook

Fareha Razvi
University of Nebraska Medical Center

Jaime Davila
Asst Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Mayo Clinic, Minnesota

Ronald Bassuner
Chief Operations Officer, Dermelle LLC

Bailin Li
Research Fellow, DuPont Pioneer

Wim Van Houten
Computer Programmer, Amsterdam

QiuXing Li
Research Scientist, Professor, Agriculture Canada, Montreal

Mohammed Obanni
Senior Director of R&D, Hain Celestial Group, Davis CA

Hanna Janska
Professor, Wroclaw University, Poland

Brian Bournival
Statistical Programmer, Book Author

Past Graduate Students

Sunil K. Kenchanmane Raju
PhD. Research Associate, Michigan State University

Mon-Ray Shao
PhD. Postdoctoral fellow, Donald Danforth Center Plant Science Center in Saint Louis, MO.

Kamaldeep Virdi
PhD. postdoctoral fellow, University of Minnesota

Roberto De La Rosa
PhD. Professor, Colegio de Postgraduados, Tabasco, Mexico

Peibei Sun
M.S., Health Data Analyst, University of Nebraska Medical Center

Geetanjali Kandari
M.S., Recruitment Advisor, Pittsburg State University at Sannam

Wilson de Paula
M.S. University of London PhD., NIH Research Scientist, Maryland

Vikas Shedge
PhD. Molecular Biologist, EpiCrop Technologies

Xuehui Feng
PhD. Molecular Breeding Scientist, Bayer Crop Science

Saleem Mohammed
PhD. Founder and CEO, XCODE Life Sciences

Ajay Sandhu
PhD., Trait Project Lead, Syngenta

Bryan Munoz-Castillo
M.S. , graduate student North Carolina State University

Veronica Murray
M.S., Senior Molecular Biologist, Dow Agro-Sciences

Ricardo Abdelnoor
PhD., Deputy Head of Research, EMBRAPA Soja

Ryan Yule
M.S., Senior Research Associate, DuPont-Pioneer

Zarir Vaghchhipawala
PhD. Research Scientist, KWS Gateway Research Center

Maria Arrieta-Montiel
PhD. Global Molecular Breeding Lead, Advanta US, College Station, TX

Delkin Orlando Gonzalez
PhD. Traits Pipeline Leader, Corteva

Rodrigo Sarria
PhD. R&D Director, Inputs Trait Discovery, Corteva

Melissa Hughes Jia
M.S., Rice Geneticist, Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center, Arkansas

Andre Abad
PhD. Senior Research Scientist, DuPont- Pioneer

Shichuan (Steve) He
Ph.D. Senior Researcher, Monsanto. (Deceased)

Brian Mehrtens
M.S. Farmer, Missouri

Kathryn Rorick Clayton
M.S., Research Scientist, Dow Agrosciences

Luiz Goulart
Ph.D, Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, UC Davis