About us
We are all graduate students working with multiple plant science disciplines. Our goal, with Corteva Agriscience, is to bring inovation and knowledge about plant sciences to our symposium.
Members
- Matthew Murphy
- Lucas Berger Munaro
- Anup Dhakal
- George Odumbe Oganda
- Milcah Kigoni
- Garima Kohli
- Mae Antonette Mercado
- Lucas K. Bobadilla
- Jeremy Logrono
Garima Kohli
Garima Kohli is one of the Co-Chairs for UIUC's 2021 Corteva Agriscience Plant Sciences Symposium. She is a 1st Ph.D. student in the Athey Lab in the Department of Crop Sciences. Her research interests include identifying the insect complexes, understanding predator-prey interactions by examining ecology of natural enemies using gut content analysis, and studying the effect of seasonality on insect species in High Tunnels. After her Ph.D., she intends to pursue a postdoc to further build on her research interests in Entomology.
Lucas B.Munaro
Lucas Berger Munaro is the CateringComitteee member for the 2022 UIUC’s Corteva Plant Agriscience Plant Sciences Symposium. He is a second-year Ph.D. student in the UIUC Small Grains Improvement group under Dr. Jessica Rutkoski. His research focuses on developing more efficient breeding methods for winter wheat profitability in a wheat-soybean double-crop system.
Jeremy Logrono
Jeremy Logrono is the Graphic Design Liaison for the 2022 UIUC’s Corteva Agriscience Plant Sciences Symposium. Currently, he is a Ph.D. student specializing in Plant Breeding and Genetics in the Small Grains Improvement lab under Dr. Jessica Rutkoski at the Department of Crop Sciences. His main research focus is developing and implementing a rapid variety development process to generate a set of soft red winter wheat varieties with unique quality traits for high-value markets.
George O. Oganda
I am from Kenya-the Land of Champions and Pride of Africa. Currently a student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where am undertaking my MS in Crop Science specializing in entomology and insect pest management of specialty crops. I am studying regenerative agricultural practices and their impacts on insect pest pressure and soil health to specialty crops production in Illinois. I also study insects’ predator-prey interactions.
Anup Dhakal
Anup Dhakal is a graduate student in the Small Grains Lab under the supervision of Dr. Juan Arbelaez at the Department of Crop Sciences. He is a member of the External Outreach Committee for this year's UIUC Corteva Plant Science Symposium. His research focuses on improving the nutritional value and milling quality of oats through phenomics and genomics.
Milcah Kigoni
Milcah Kigoni is the secretary and external funding coordinator for UIUC's 2022 Corteva Agriscience Plant Sciences Symposium. She is a 2 year Ph.D. student in the UIUC Small grains improvement program, under the direction of Dr. Juan Arbelaez. Currently, her research is on developing inter cropping breeding strategies to improve forage Oat production in the Midwest, USA. Beside science, Milcah enjoys listening to gospel music and podcasts, cooking, nature walks, ziplining, yoga, going on Safari and hosting social events.
Lucas K. Bobadilla
Lucas is the social media chair for the UIUC Plant Science Symposium. Lucas is a weed scientist and computational biologist PhD candidate at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the use of computational biology to understand weeds adaptation in agricultural environments mainly studying herbicide resistance evolution.
Matthew Murphy
Matthew Murphy is the Co-Chairs for UIUC’s 2022 Corteva AgrisciencePlant Sciences Symposium. Matthew is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Lipka Lab. Matthew's research interests include testing different statistical models in identifying variance quantitative trait loci (vQTLs), epistasis, and GxE interactions. After UIUC, Matthew intends to pursue a postdoc to further build on his research interests in plant breeding.
Mae A. Mercado
Mae Antonette Mercado is one of the two External Outreach Committee member for the 2022 UIUC’s Corteva Agriscience Plant Sciences Symposium. She is a third-year PhD student in the Studer Lab in the Department of Crop Sciences. She is from the Philippines, where she was trained as a crop physiologist before coming to UIUC to work on photosynthesis of different wild grass species and maize. After her PhD, Mae plans to pursue a career in research and science communication. Outside of research, she enjoys brush pen calligraphy, singing, playing the ukulele and playing badminton.