Professor

Focus

Research

Plants exhibit incredible adaptability to their external environment via an intricate cohort of signaling mechanisms that simultaneously regulate growth and disease physiology. The long-term goals of my program are to understand these intricate signaling mechanisms. For this, we primarily use Arabidopsis and soybean as our experimental systems to study local and systemic defense responses against viral, bacterial, and fungal pathogens. On-going projects are focused on: 

• Understanding the movement of chemical signals that regulate plant systemic immunity
• Understanding how glycerolipid metabolism interfaces with defense signaling
• Identifying and characterizing plant targets of microbial effectors
• Understanding the overlap in responses induced by pathogenic versus beneficial microorganisms

Teaching

• PPA 500: Physiology of Plant Health & Disease
• PPA 785: Special Problems in Plant Pathology
• PPA 395: Independent Study in Plant Pathology
• BIO 199: Research Experience for STEMCats

Employment Highlights

• Professor, University of Kentucky, 2017 to present
• Associate Professor, University of Kentucky, 2012-2017
• Assistant Professor, University of Kentucky, 2006-2012
• Ag Research Specialist, University of Kentucky, 2003-2006
• Postdoctoral Scholar, Cornell University, 2000-2002  

Awards, Recognition, Service

• Annual lab research-based workshops at the Youth Science Summit, Lexington KY
• Annual lab research-based workshops at the Girl Scouts GEMS program
• Annual research presentations to Kentucky corn and soybean growers
• ASPB Young Women Investigator Travel Award, 2007
• Rockefeller Foundation graduate fellowship, 1994-1996  

Professional Affiliations

• American Society of Plant Biology
• American Phytopathological Society
• International Society of Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions
• American Soybean Association