University of MissouriAffiliated Scientists
Bill AllenAssistant Professor
University of Missouri School of Journalism
Research Focus: Science Journalism and Agricultural Journalism Program
Douglas AllenResearch Biologist
USDA-ARS
Research Focus: Research interests include the analysis of metabolic networks in plants by combined experimental and computational methods. These investigations give insight to plant metabolism, important for designing crops to meet future nutritional and chemical feedstock needs.
Ivan BaxterResearch Biologist
USDA-ARS
Research Focus: Interest includes the understanding how plants regulate the mobilization, uptake, translocation, and storage of elements in different environments. We are focusing our efforts on the seeds of corn and soybeans. The seeds are important not only as the component of the plant that gets used for food, but also as a summary tissue of many physiological processes that are important for plant growth. We also study model systems to understand basic processes and apply this knowledge to the crop plants.
Kristin BilyeuAdjunct Associate Professor
Division of Plant Sciences, USDA-ARS
Research Focus: Functional genomics of seed composition.
Glen T. CameronProfessor and Maxine Wilson Gregory Chair in Journalism Research
Research Focus: Communication Management Theory, Health Communication Evaluation, New Technologies in Communication, Information Pollution in Mass Media and Information Processing of Media Messages
Jianlin ChengAssistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
Research Focus: Bioinformatics, Systems Biology, Machine Learning and Data Mining
David W. EmerichProfessor
Department of Biochemistry
Research Focus: Symbiotic nitrogen fixation in soybeans.
James T. EnglishProfessor
Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: The plant pathogen, Phytophthora, develops through a series of life stages from dormant propagules to infective zoospore cysts, in the course of infecting a plant root. The transition from one life stage to the next depends on the reception of environmental signals, particularly those generated by host plants. The long?term goal of our research program is to identify and manipulate novel biomolecules that disrupt life stage progression that depends on such signals.
Jill FindeisDirector of Applied Social Sciences
Division of Applied Social Sciences
Research Focus: Understanding decision-making behaviors, especially as related to providing food security using environmentally sustainable practices, human health and disease dynamics, and labor utilization and understanding the impacts of public policy reform in spatially-differentiated contexts.
Virgil J. FlaniganEmeritus Professor
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (Rolla)
Research Focus: Alternate energy studies including biomass gasification systems, dual fuel combustion studies, waste utilization and coal characteristics, mechanical and hydraulic control systems.
William FolkProfessor
Department of Biochemistry
Research Focus: Phytonutrients and seed composition.
Kevin FritscheProfessor
Division of Animal Science
Research Focus: Nutritional Immunology
Felix FritschiAssistant Professor
Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: Nitrogen nutrition and plant responses to abiotic stress.
Shubhra GangopadhyayLaPierre Endowed Chair Professor
Material Science and Physics
Research Focus: PECVD, Sputtering and ECR deposition of amorphous Silicon, Carbon, Silicon Carbide and Silicon Nitride films. . Leakage current, programming and reliability studies of metal-to-metal antifuse for FPGAs. Growth and Characterization of low-k nanoporous dielectric thin films for inter level dielectrics for ULSI processing. Growth and Characterization of High-k Gate Dielectric Materials, Fabrication of Micro Electro-Mechanical Devices and Micro-sensors. Characterization of thin films by infrared absorption spectroscopy, Raman, continuous wave photoluminescence and picosecond time resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy, constant photocurrent method, space charge limited current technique. Capacitance-voltage measurements of MIS devices. Study of defects in polycrystalline diamond, Applications of supercritical carbon dioxide in microelectronics and MEMS devices, Nano-Engineered Energetic Materials.
Walter GassmannAssociate Professor
Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: Genetic and molecular analysis of plant disease resistance.
Melissa Goellner MitchumAssociate Professor
Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: The major focus of research in the Mitchum lab is the molecular basis of plant-nematode interactions with an emphasis on the interaction between the soybean cyst nematode (SCN; Heterodera glycines) and its host plant, soybean.
Eliot HermanAdjunct Professor
Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: The primary focus of my research program is producing modifications of soybean proteins to improve composition, produce novel products, and reduce allergenicity. This will increase soybean utilization as both food and feed. Parallel objectives are to investigate the control and regulation of protein expression and accumulation, including collateral gene expression as the consequence of genetic modification. My laboratory has additional secondary projects that include two broad investigations with multi-institutional interactions. These projects include one focusing on the gene expression and cell biology of plants exposed to subfreezing temperatures and another on dinoflagellate genomics.
Fu-Hung HsiehDirector of Graduate Studies, Professor
Biological Engineering and Food Science
Research Focus: Extrusion of foods and feeds, processing of grain-based foods, new uses of agricultural materials and biomechanics.
Nicholas KalaitzandonakesProfessor
Agriculture Economics and Biotechnology
Research Focus: Economics and policy of agrifood biotechnology and other agribusiness innovations.
Shubhen KapilaMSMC Endowed Professor
Department of Chemistry
Research Focus: Development of industrial soybean products.
Kattesh V. KattiProfessor
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Research Focus: Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Nanomedicine; Metals/Organomatallics In the Development of Cancer Diagnostic and Therapeutic Agents; Biomedical Optical Imaging; New Approaches to Cancer Therapy; New Biomaterials for use in Surgical and Non-surgical Wound Healing applications; Fundamental Aspects of Structure of Water and Water-Alcohol Binary Mixtures
Monty KerleyProfessor
Division of Animal Sciences
Research Focus: Animal Nutrition.
Dmitry KorkinAssistant Professor
Informatics Institute and Department of Computer Science
Research Focus: Development and application of structural bioinformatics methods to study structure, function, and evolution of macromolecular assemblies; studying structural mimicry in host-pathogen interactions.
Hari KrishnanResearch Molecular Biologist, Adjunct Professor
USDA-ARS, Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: Modification of soybean seed composition and Rhizobium-soybean symbiosis
Dennis LubahnProfessor, Director
Department of Biochemistry & Department of Child Health, Center for Phytonutrient & Phytochemical Studies
Research Focus: Extrusion of foods and feeds, processing of grain-based foods, new uses of agricultural materials, and biomechanics.
Jan MiernykAdjunct Professor
Department of Biochemistry
Research Focus: Protein targeting and folding in plants AREAS: Oorganelle biogenesis, posttranslational modifications.
Todd C. MocklerAssociate Member and Principal Investigator
Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
Research Focus: Research focus: The ultimate goal of the Mockler lab is to elucidate the means to predict plant performance, responses, and behaviors from genetic/epigenetic/ transcriptomic data across a range of environments. Achieving this goal requires developing new computational tools, predictive algorithms, modeling approaches, development of monocot-focused experimental tools, and a high-throughput digital phenotyping platform.
Azlin MustaphaAssociate Professor, Director of Graduate School
Food Science
Research Focus: Food Microbiology; biochemical and genetic analysis of enzyme systems.
Henry T. NguyenServed as NCSB Director from 2003 to 2015
Curators' Distinguished Professor & MSMC Endowed Professor, University of Missouri, Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: Genetic and physical mapping of the soybean genome; integrated functional genomics and QTL mapping of plant responses to stress including drought and soybean cyst nematode; genetic and metabolic engineering for value-added seed composition.
Mel OliverSupervisory Research Geneticist, Adjunct Professor
USDA-ARS, Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: Modification of Soybean Seed Composition for Food, Feed, and Other Industrial Uses
Joe L. ParcellDirector, Associate Professor
Missouri Value Added Development, Agricultural Economics
Research Focus: Value added agriculture business development, marketing, price analysis, and farm structure.
Scott C. PeckAssociate Professor
Department of Biochemistry
Research Focus: Proteomics of protein phosphorylation and protein kinases; signaling and secretion during host-pathogen interactions.
Joseph C. PolaccoProfessor Emeritus
Department of Biochemistry
Research Focus: Assimilation of fixed N, expression and role of arginine breakdown enzymes, Putilization and non-conventional means of improving soybean performance.
Douglas D. RandallThomas Jefferson Fellow Professor Emeritus
Department of Biochemistry
Research Focus: Metabolism, signal transduction, protein kinases and phosphorylated proteins in plants.
Craig RobertsProfessor, State Forage Specialist
Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: Forage Quality & Persistence, Biochemical Defense Mechanisms
Andrew ScabooAssistant Research Professor
Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: Soybean Genetics & Breeding
Jack C. SchultzDirector, Professor
Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center, Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: Plant response to insects and microbes; plant ecological responses and constraints; how plants detect different stimuli and organize stimulus-specific biochemical responses.
J. Grover ShannonServed as Associate NCSB Director from 2010 to 2015
Professor Emeritus, University of Missouri, Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: Soybean Breeding and Genetics; Research is focused on drought, flooding, and soybean cyst menatode resistance and value-added seed composition.
Robert SharpProfessor
Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: Regulation of root and shoot growth responses to drought. Specific interests include: hormonal growth regulation, in particular the role of abscisic acid; mechanisms of cell wall loosening; osmotic adjustment.
Chi-Ren ShyuShumaker Endowed Associate Professor, Director
Bioinformatics, MU Informatics Institute
Research Focus: Dr. Shyu has concentrated his informatics research efforts in three major areas – visual phenotypes to genotypes correlation, large-scale genomic data mining and retrievals, and computational structure biology. His research group has developed several unique bioinformatics tools for protein tertiary structure retrievals (ProteinDBS), repetitive/highly conserved sequence retrieval system (ACMES), and plant visual phenotypes/genotypes retrieval system (VPhenoDBS).
David SleperServed as Associate Director from 2003 to 2010
Emeritus Professor, University of Missouri, Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: Soybean genetics and breeding.
Gary StaceyServed as Associate Director from 2003 to 2015
Curators' Professor, Universtiy of Missouri, Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: Microbial and plant development. Specific interests include: symbiotic nitrogen fixation, plant molecular biology, peptide transport, functional and structural plant genomics.
Laura SweetsExtension Associate Professor
Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: To provide educational programming, applied research, demonstration work and other efforts aimed at identifying and managing diseases of field crops in Missouri.
Jay ThelenAssociate Professor
Department of Biochemistry
Research Focus: Seed proteomics; seed development, oilseed metabolism, plant metabolic pathways and metabolic engineering, protein biochemistry, genomic and proteomic approaches towards understanding plant metabolism.
Xuemin WangE. Desmond Lee and Family Fund Professor
Department of Biology, University of Missouri-St. Louis
Research Focus: Signal transduction processes in plant growth and stress responses; Lipid-mediated signaling; Regulation and function of phospholipases; Lipidomics and metabolic profiling; Metabolic engineering and oilseed quality.
William WieboldProfessor
Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: Soybean crop management and production.
James Allen WratherProfessor
Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: Soybean disease control and extension plant pathology.
Dong XuChair, Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science, Bioinformatics
Research Focus: Protein structure prediction, high-throughput biological data analyses, computational proteomics, in silico studies of plant, microbes, and neural systems.
Oliver YuAssociate Member and Principal Investigator
Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, Molecular Biology
Research Focus: Plant secondary metabolism, gene regulation, and enzymatic interactions related to isoflavonoid biosyntheis in legumes.
Zhanyuan ZhangDirector, Research Associate Professor
Plant Transformation Core Facility, Division of Plant Sciences
Research Focus: Plant Genetic Engineering; Soybean transformation The primary research goal in my laboratory is to develop cutting-edge transgene technologies for soybean (Glycine max) and maize (Zea mays). My research focus is on developing high-throughput transformation processes for soybean and maize and efficient gene regulation in complex genome such as soybean. I am also interested in soybean functional genomics employing reverse genetics tools.