Students, Staff and Post-Docs

Yue Shan

Yue Shan is an Economics Ph.D.  student at North Carolina State University. Her fields of research are agricultural economics and international trade.  She had joined the team as a research assistant. She hopes to contribute her knowledge and skills to the project and learn from the project.

Sam Humphrey

Sam Humphrey is a Masters student studying strawberry propagation in controlled environments with Dr. Ricardo Hernández. He is working to understand how strawberry plants react to environmental cues like temperature, light intensity, and carbon dioxide concentration, to improve propagation efficiency and plant quality.

Jung Hoon Han

Jung Hoon Han is a PhD student in the department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University. His research focuses on food consumption and welfare changes. His involvement in the project includes Development and Integration of Next-Generation Propagation Strategies to Enhance the Resilience of the US Strawberry Supply Chain.

Samantha Simard

Samantha Simard is currently a graduate student at California Polytechnic State University. Having received her Bachelor of Science in Agriculture Science and a minor in Biology from Southern Utah University, Samantha returned to her hometown of San Luis Obispo to pursue a masters degree. As a Master of Science Candidate in Agriculture with a specialization in Plant Protection/Pathology.

Christina Ippoliti

Christina Ippoliti is a Ph.D. candidate in Molecular and Cellular Biology in Dr. Zhongchi Liu’s lab at the University of Maryland – College Park. She is passionate about sustainability; in her work and studies, she hopes to build bridges between molecular plant biology and regenerative agriculture. Her current research projects in the lab focus on understanding fruit and runner development and improving genetic transfection methods in strawberry.

Xi Luo

Xi is a postdoctoral associate in Prof. Zhongchi Liu lab at the department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, University of Maryland. She received her Ph.D. in the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, studying plant development using Arabidopsis. In 2019, she joined Dr. Zhongchi Liu’s lab at UMD, and her research focus on the regulation of compound leaf morphology and anthocyanin accumulation of diploid strawberries.

Erin Yafuso

Erin is a postdoctoral researcher with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. She works in Dr. Jennifer Boldt’s lab at the Toledo, OH worksite of the Application Technology Research Unit. Erin has a PhD in Horticultural Sciences from the University of Florida. In her current role, Erin will focus on nutrient optimization of strawberry mother plants in controlled environments to enhance daughter plant propagation rates and quality.  

Pooja Tripathi

I am a first year PhD student at the Ohio State University. Before joining Ohio State, I received a master’s degree in Plant Biosciences from South Korea.  I am working on developing controlled environment strategies to condition young plants for optimized propagation behavior in strawberry transplants, supervised by Dr. Kubota. Our focus is to develop greenhouse propagation methodologies for year-round supply of daughter plants.  

Lian Mahorith Duron Alvarado

Lian Durón is a Masters student in the department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Purdue University. Her research focuses on developing environmental strategies to maintain quality during long-term storage of strawberry rooted and unrooted tips. Lian was born in
Honduras and has a BS from Zamorano University.

Ian Mellon

Ian Mellon is a Research Technician with Dr. Gina Fernandez developing elite strawberry and caneberry cultivars. He completed his Master’s degree from Cornell University studying plant breeding and plant pathology. His goal is to improve yield, disease resistance, and genetic diversity of North Carolina strawberries utilizing modern molecular techniques.

Calyssa Stevenson

Calyssa Stevenson is a Master’s student in Dr. Gina Fernandez’s lab at NCSU. Her research focuses on evaluating the fruit quality of strawberry runners propagated in controlled environments once transferred to the field. Calyssa received her B.S. in Plant Breeding and Biotechnology in Horticultural Science from NC State.

Moein Moosavi-Nezhad

Moein Moosavi-Nezhad is a Ph.D. student in the Horticultural Sciences department at NC State University, working in the Controlled-Environment Agriculture Lab under Ricardo Hernandez. He started working in CEA in 2016 at the University of Tehran focusing on plant-light interactions in grafted vegetables and finished his master’s in 2019. After graduating, he continued research on light-plant interactions in CEA and joined the Strawberry PIP-CAP SCRI in August 2022.

Ibraheem Olamide Olasupo

Ibraheem has worked as a lecturer at Sule Lamido University, Kafin Hausa (SLUK), and Binyaminu Usman
Polytechnic, Hadejia, both in Nigeria over a cumulative period of six years. He served as Ag Deputy Dean
and Examination Officer of the Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources Management at SLUK. He
has published high impact research articles in reputable journals both locally and internationally. He is currently a Post doctoral Research Scholar on the PIP-CAP, investigating various interests
on strawberry production in controlled environments.

Kim Heagy

I am the Research Assistant with the lab. I assist in field trials, greenhouse trials, and laboratory work for both strawberry and grape research initiatives. I also manage the indoor greenhouse strawberry nursery. 

Baker D. Aljawasim

Baker D. Aljawasim is a doctoral student at the Hampton Roads Agricultural Research and Extension Center, School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Virginia Tech University. He holds a M.S. in Plant Pathology from the University of Kentucky. His research is focused on mapping of flower buds, branched crowns and crop yield after exposing strawberry plants to different growing degree days (GDD) in the fall season.

Emma Volk

Rocco Schiavone