Title: Project Data Scientist
Organization: Heritable Agriculture
Previous Role: Postdoctoral Researcher, Iowa State University
After graduating in 2013 from Integrative Biology, Stephanie worked for one year at Chromatin, Inc., which was then based in the UIUC Research Park. She hadn’t intended on pursuing plant research when she began her undergrad degree, but her experiences in IB 203 and research at the SoyFACE facility led her to pursue her Ph.D. in plant biology at Penn State University and now a postdoctoral position at Iowa State University.
"I remember it was specifically the IB Ecology class that was a game changer for me. Prior to that class, I had intended to pursue a biomedical career. One of the last lectures of the semester discussed broad topics relating to the ecological effects of climate change and introduced some current (at the time) research projects on campus at the SoyFACE facility. I immediately emailed a faculty member to see if they were hiring any undergraduate research assistants for the summer, and - as they say - the rest is history."
Stephanie has experience as a postdoctoral research associate, working to integrate genetics, genomics, phenomics, and physiology to better understand how the root system helps plants respond and adapt to stressful environments. While her Ph.D. work was focused on drought stress, she has since shifted toward understanding how roots respond to variable nitrogen availability. Stephanie is now a Project Data Scientist at a start-up based in the Bay Area that recently spun out of Google's X, The Moonshot Factory. They aim to partner with specialty crop producers to develop new varieties using cutting edge tools in AI. Stephanie will work with producers to analyze their data and feed it through discovery pipelines to identify new genes or varieties that might excel in a given environment.
Stephanie would be a great person to talk to about industry opportunities, academic research opportunities, graduate school applications, how to get the most out of your graduate experience, and plant/agricultural research. Contact Christina Swanson at alumnimentor@sib.illinois.edu if you would like to connect with Stephanie.