PAG 2022 Speaker Profiles

Ellie Taagen

Graduate Student
School of Integrative Plant Science Plant Breeding and Genetics Section
Cornell University, USA

Recipient of the 2022 IWGSC Early Career Award - Read her interview here

Research Interests
Quantitative Genetics, Data Science, Molecular Biology, Food Security

Current Projects
Biological constraints of meiotic recombination in a plant breeding context, and the potential to modify recombination to enhance genetic gain.

PAG talk
Date: Saturday 08 January 2022
Title: Challenges and opportunities in positional cloning and structural variation in polyploid crops

Links
- Ellie's webpage
- Twitter
- Linkedin
- Mark Sorrells Lab

Michael Hammond-Kosack

Wheat Genetic Improvement Network (WGIN) Organiser
Rothamsted Research, UK

Research Interest
Wheat Genomics, Regulation of Gene Expression, Introgressing Resistance from diploid wheat relatives into hexaploidy wheat

Current Projects
- Promotome Capture in wheat
- Introgressing Resistance from diploid wheat relatives into hexaploidy wheat

PAG talk
Date: Saturday 8 January 2022
Title: Exploring the Diversity of Promoter and 5’UTR Sequences in Ancestral, Historic and Modern Wheat.

Link
- Lab website

Miguel Angel Raffo Busco

Current Position
PhD Student
Center of Quantitative Genetics & Genomics
Aarhus University, Denmark

Research Interest
Wheat breeding, genomic prediction, gene-by-gene interactions, genotype-by-environment (GxE) interactions, macro- and micro-environmental sensitivity.

Current Projects
PhD project: “Adaptation of wheat breeding to changing environments”

PAG talk
Date: Saturday 8 January 2022
Title: Improvement of Genomic Prediction in Advanced Wheat Breeding Lines By Including Additive-By-Additive Epistasis 

Links
- LinkedIn
- University webpage

Katherine Running

Graduate Research Assistant
North Dakota State University, USA

Research Interest
Using genetics and genomics to study host-pathogen interactions to further the development of genetically resistant wheat.

Current Projects
Mapping, cloning, and characterizing necrotrophic susceptibility genes in the septoria nodorum blotch and tan spot pathosystemsPAG talk

PAG talk
Date: Saturday 08 January 2022
Title: Exploitation of Wheat Genomic Resources and Collaborations to Rapidly Clone Multiple Disease Susceptibility Genes.

Links
- Twitter
- LinkedIn

Akshaya Vasudevan

PhD Candidate,
University of Ottawa, Canada
and
Research Affiliate
Agriculture and Agri‐Food Canada

Research Interest
Plant transcriptomics, genomics, plant computational biology, evolution of polyploids, utilization of wild species for crop improvement.

Current Projects
Genomic interactions in synthetic hexaploid wheat: Study of transcriptomic and structural changes in resynthesized hexaploid wheat.

PAG talk
Date: Saturday 08 January 2022
Title: Gene Expression Dynamics upon Allopolyploidization: Global Transcriptome Analysis Reveals Large-Scale Repression of the ‘D’ Subgenome in Synthetic Hexaploid Wheat.

Links
- LinkedIn