Contact Information

I am a Research Plant Physiologist with the Sunflower and Plant Biology Research Unit, Edward T. Schaffer Agricultural Research Center, Fargo, ND. The mission of the unit is to develop knowledge and technology that benefit the sunflower industry and consumers and discover novel solutions for weed management. The weed management research program falls under NP304 (Investigation of the Biology of Pests-Weeds). As a member of the research team, I am responsible for investigating plant-plant interactions and signaling at the genetic and molecular level with the hopes of creating more weed-tolerant crops for more sustainable weed control and enhanced use of cover-cropping and inter-cropping technologies. I have recently also gotten back into freezing tolerance in potential brassica cover-crops such as winter canola and camelina for northern agro-ecosystems. I am also starting to look at following weed population expansion (in Palmer amaranth and kudzu) using gene association as a tool to better understand invasiveness and adaptation to more northern climates. For fun, I like making all sorts of things and am a long time member of the society for creative anachronism and have recently discovered steam punk.