Corteva Travel Scholarship Winner 2024
Justin Pitts
Justin is a broadly trained plant physiologist with interests in both crop and tree species. His research is focused on the impacts of changing environmental conditions on plant function, disfunction and disease formation in hopes of better understanding their mechanisms under global climate change. Justin’s current research is multi-faceted with focus on the impacts of drought stress on coffee and peanut physiology to inform future breeding efforts. He also is studying the role that soil environmental conditions play in the formation of Aflatoxin (a known carcinogen) in peanut, with hopes of eradicating it from food systems globally.
Title: Brewing Resilience: Unraveling the Enduring Impacts of Drought on Coffee Physiology, Recovery and Detection
Sheryl N. Sierra
Sheryl current research is focused on testing genomic selection for wheat quality and evaluating the genetic gain for quality traits in hard winter wheat germplasm in Nebraska. She is interested in research related to improving challenging traits in crops using new technologies. she’s studying the important genes related to wheat quality traits and how those gene combinations could improve the quality of wheat in Nebraska. she also worked on barley breeding in the UNL small grains breeding program.
Title: Enhancing winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) end-use quality through molecular applications
Kajal Gupta
Kajal Gupta is from India. She completed her Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from Punjab Agricultural University. In 2023, she started her Ph.D. journey as a graduate research assistant at the School of Plant, Environmental, and Soil Sciences at Louisiana State University under the guidance of Dr. Roberto Fritsche-Neto. Her academic pursuits center around predictive breeding and image analysis. Her Ph.D. research focuses on genomic models for rice diseases using high-throughput phenotyping. Beyond academia, she finds joy in cooking.
Title: Reaction Norms on Environmental Covariates for Grain Quality Traits in Rice
Introduced in 2016 to foster interaction between graduate students studying plant breeding at Texas A&M and the students studying plant breeding or related science at other institutions. The program encourages information exchange on research ideas and promotes networking among students at the symposium. The scholarship is solely administered by the symposium organizing committee and is fully funded by Corteva.
Three students will be selected to present oral keynote lectures during the day of the symposium. The presentation will be a 10 minute oral followed by 5 minutes of questions. In addition, awardees may present a poster of their research to allow for follow-up discussion during the poster session. All selected students will receive travel scholarships. Finally, visiting travel scholars will have the opportunity to arrange meetings with local researchers the following day.
Eligibility
Applicants must be full-time graduate or undergraduate students at United States college affiliated institutions.
All applicants must upload their "Presentation Title”, "Presentation Abstract," and other required information into the student competition sign-up form.
All applicants must follow the abstract submission guidelines.
All applicants must send their research presentation electronically no later than the day prior to the scheduled presentation.
Applicant must agree to arrive at on February 14 and leave on February 17.
Deadline
January 7th, 2024
ABSTRACT SUBMISSIONS CLOSE
Selection Criteria
The originality of the research presented, which may or may not be explicitly related to the symposium theme
The quality of the writing (including clarity, grammar, and understandable)
The interest of the subject matter and approach
The suitability of the conference presentation (including appropriate length, clear results obtained, and appropriate conclusions).
The Graduate Student Organizing Committee will evaluate blind abstracts to select the three awardees.
*In fairness to other participants, abstracts that are over the specific word limit will automatically be disqualified.
Awards
Travel scholarship
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Hotel Accommodation
February 14, 15 & 16