2024 Award

Dr. Valerio Hoyos-Villegas

Assistant Professor
Plant Breeding and Genetics
McGill University
Research website

Dr. Valerio Hoyos-Villegas obtained his MS in Crop Physiology from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2011 and his PhD from Michigan State University in Plant Breeding, Genetics and Biotechnology in 2015. He is an Assistant Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics at McGill University, where he leads the pulse breeding and genetics laboratory. Valerio started two breeding programs, one in common beans and another in chickpeas. Valerio has co-developed his breeding programs by creating partnerships with the industry, enabling a path-to-market for variety releases.

The focus of Valerio’s research group is on understanding and improving quantitative traits in crop plants. Valerio’s contributions to science have focused on 1) identifying genomic signals using association panels and linkage mapping populations; 2) developing pre-breeding populations and characterizing germplasm; 3) understanding the impact of artificial selection systems on genetic gain in breeding populations; 4) designing quantitative genetics software for plant breeding program simulation; and 5) creating field phenomics tools for plant breeding program applications. 

Valerio is a passionate advocate for plant breeding education and the mentoring of future scientists. Valerio developed and currently teaches undergraduate and graduate-level plant breeding and genetics courses. Valerio is associate and technical editor in multiple scientific journals (including The Plant Phenome Journal) and serves in leadership roles at the North American Plant Phenotyping Network (NAPPN) and the National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB). Valerio has been involved with NAPPN since 2021 and has served on the NAPPN executive board since 2023.

2023 Award

Dr. Addie Thompson

Assistant Professor
Plant, Soil & Microbial Sciences and Plant Resilience Institute
Michigan State University
Research website

Addie Thompson is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University in the department of Plant, Soil & Microbial Sciences, and a member of MSU's Plant Resilience Institute. She obtained her PhD in Applied Plant Sciences - Plant Breeding and Molecular Genetics from the University of Minnesota, and a BS in Genetics from Iowa State University. Prior to her current appointment at Michigan State, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Purdue University in the area of field-based phenomics and quantitative genetics. Current research initiatives in the Thompson lab follow these two areas of interest, primarily in maize and sorghum.

Dr. Thompson has been involved with NAPPN since its inception and was elected to the board in 2022. At MSU, she has led a successful plant phenomics initiative to bring together fundamental plant scientists, plant breeders, and computational scientists. She also developed and teaches “Frontiers in Computational and Plant Sciences,” a project-driven graduate course with public/private partnerships that trains students at the intersection of these fields. Addie is passionate about mentoring and education through hands-on experiences to prepare students for a rapidly changing field, as well as creating connections to industry and stakeholders.

2022 Award

Dr. Ian Stavness

Director, Plant Phenotyping and Imaging Research Center, Enhancement Chair
Global Institute for Food Security
Associate Professor, Computer Science
University of Saskatchewan
Research website

Ian Stavness is the Director of the Plant Phenotyping and Imaging Research Center, a Research Chair at the Global Institute for Food Security, and an Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Saskatchewan. He obtained his PhD from the University of British Columbia and was an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow in Bio-Engineering at Stanford University prior to joining the University of Saskatchewan. His research team focuses on the application of machine learning and computer vision in crop breeding, agronomy and food production.

Dr. Stavness has led a number of initiatives that have helped to integrate the computer science and plant science communities, including the 2021 Computer Vision in Plant Phenotyping and Agriculture workshop. He has also helped to bridge between the North American and International plant phenotyping communities by organizing the 2020 and 2021 Global Wheat Head Detection data science competitions. He is a strong advocate for harnessing data science to tackle grand challenges in food security and improving the economic and environmental sustainability of food production.

2021 Award

Dr. Malia Gehan

Assistant Member and Principal Investigator
Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
St. Louis, Mo, 63132
http:www.gehan-lab.org/
@maliagehan

Malia Gehan did undergraduate research on heat stress and thermotolerance in tobacco at Willamette University and she did her Ph.D. research examining the intersection of cold signaling and the circadian at Michigan State University. She was an NSF Plant Genome Postdoctoral Fellow and is currently an Assistant Member and Principal Investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, whose group focuses on understanding mechanisms of crop resilience under temperature stress. To study temperature stress and natural variation, the Gehan lab develops high-throughput and high-resolution image-based phenotyping technologies, including low-cost solutions that use Raspberry Pi computers. The Gehan Lab co-develops and maintain the open-source open-development suite of image analysis tools, PlantCV (https://plantcv.danforthcenter.org/), along with Dr. Noah Fahlgren’s group.

Dr. Gehan was part of the steering committee that helped to form the North American Plant Phenotyping Network and was elected to the board in 2020. Dr. Gehan is interested in increasing communication and connections across phenomics-related disciplines and organizations; using plant phenotyping as a way of increasing student interest in plant science and skills in data science, and democratizing plant phenotyping using open-source hardware and software.

2020 Award

Dr. Alexander Bucksch

Assistant Professor
Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources; Institute of Bioinformatics
Department of Plant Biology
University of Georgia, USA
@koalaspirit
Research website

2019 Award

Dr. James C. Schnable

Assistant Professor
Quantitative Life Sciences Initiative
Center for Plant Science Innovation
Nebraska Food for Health Center
Department of Agronomy & Horticulture
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
@szintri
Research website
Press release from University of Nebraska-Lincoln