Maize Translational Genomics

People

Manisha Munasinghe

Post-Doc

Manisha's CV
Orcid
Twitter/X
My research program explores the complex ways with which non-Mendelian elements shape genotypic, phenotypic, and species-level variation using a variety of approaches across a diverse set of taxa. Currently, I am exploring how variation in transposable element content contributes to phenotypic variation in a diverse panel of inbred maize lines.

Sarah Fitzsimmons

Post-Doc

Sarah's Website
I am an ORISE Postdoctoral Fellow working on the Circular Economy that Reimagines Corn Agriculture (CERCA) project. I am studying how nitrogen accumulates in cobs and other tissues to enable on-farm nitrogen recycling. I am also interested in amino acids, quantitative genetics, and all things corn!

Claire C. Menard

Ph.D. Candidate

Claire's CV
LinkedIn
My research involves identifying and characterizing transposable element movement (TE) in maize using bioinformatic tools used to capture novel TE insertions and studying the TE families that are moving more frequently.

Rommel M. Garrido Jr.

Ph.D. Candidate

Rommel's CV
Google Scholar
My research project focuses on the causes and consequences of structural variation in plant genomes. One cause of structural variation is the movement of transposable elements around the genome. Structural variations can have several consequences, including effects on genotype imputation (the process of inferring missing genotype data) and plant phenotypes.

Sydney Berry

M.S. Student

LinkedIn
My research focuses on characterizing abiotic stress response in commercial maize through co-expression networks. I am generally very interested in genetics and bioinformatics!

Allen Gelfond

Ph.D. Student

LinkedIn
My interests lie at the intersection of bioinformatics and applied plant breeding, leveraging our understanding of genomes and plant diversity to improve plant systems and predict trends. I'm particularly excited by exploring the wide diversity of crop plants, such as drawing connections from teosinte to modern maize.

Hirsch Lab Alumni