People Type: Students

It is an honor to work on potato, one of the world’s most important food crops. I’m originally from Ethiopia. After graduating, I served for over 10 years as a researcher at the Amhara Agricultural Research Institute, where I was responsible for designing and conducting both lab and field-based potato research. In fall 2023, I …

Olee is a Ph.D. student at the Townsend Lab (co-supervised by Dr. Phil Townsend and Dr. Amanda Gevens) researching the capacities of imaging spectroscopy for early disease detection in potatoes. She is interested in applying remote sensing technologies in the agricultural and conservation domains, in particular data analysis and imaging techniques for site-specific monitoring and …

I’m a PhD student in the department of Plant Pathology, co-advised by Dr. Amanda Gevens and Dr. Russ Groves (Entomology). I completed a Biology B.S. at UW-Madison and then a Plant Pathology M.S. at the University of Minnesota. My current project is focused on evaluating the historical performance of potato disease models in Wisconsin and …

Grazi is a first-year PhD student in the Plant Pathology department co-advised by Dr. Amanda Gevens and Dr. Peter Digennaro and is interested in plant-microbe interactions and disease management. She will be investigating the interaction between Pratylenchus and Verticilium in the Potato Early Dying disease complex.