Planning Committee
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University of Florida
United States
The statistical services that Dr. van Santen and his team include assisting with experimental design and data analyses. His goal is to develop better experimental approaches that make clients more competitive when applying for sponsored awards and writing publications.
Jord Bioscience
Andrea Arias is a leader in Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics, transforming agriculture by integrating advanced data science with biological innovation. With a B.S. in Biotechnology from USFQ-Ecuador and a Ph.D. in Plant Breeding and Genetics from Iowa State University, Andrea combines deep scientific expertise with a forward-thinking approach to tackle complex challenges in crop improvement and agricultural sustainability.
Andrea spent ten years at Corteva, where she advanced automated analytical pipelines and decision systems for breeding operations across diverse crops and regions. She later led the global data science group within Research and Development, driving innovation and collaboration to enhance plant breeding and agricultural research.
In 2022, Andrea joined Jord Bioscience as Vice President of Data Science and Crop Testing. In this role, she integrates advanced analytics with biological innovation to improve the performance and complement the modes of action of agricultural products. Her work includes leveraging computer vision, experimental design, and statistical analysis to support product development and data-driven decisions. Additionally, Andrea oversees product field testing, genomics pipelines, data management, and delivering actionable analytics insights to drive innovation and impact in agricultural systems.
Beyond her professional achievements, Andrea is a dedicated mentor to early-career scientists, sharing her expertise to shape the next generation of leaders in agricultural data science.
Iowa State University
United States
Philip Dixon is a University Professor in the Department of Statistics at Iowa State University. His research centers on developing and evaluating statistical methods to answer biological questions, and his research interests include ecological and environmental statistics, mathematical biology, and computational modeling. He previously worked as a biostatistician at the Savannah River Ecology Lab administered by the University of Georgia. He earned his A.B. in biology from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.S. in statistics from Cornell University, and a PhD in ecology an evolutionary biology from Cornell University.
Iowa State University
United States
Somak Dutta is an Associate Professor of Statistics at Iowa State University. He obtained his BS and MS from the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India, and PhD from the University of Chicago. His research interests include matrix-free computations, high-dimensional regressions, and spatial statistics.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
United States
Reka Howard is an assistant professor of Statistics at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She received a PhD in Statistics and Plant Breeding from Iowa State University. Her research interests are in developing statistical methods for genomic prediction, and the application of statistical methods in plant breeding. Her recent work focuses on the optimization of statistical methods for genomic prediction, and model development for genotype by environmental interaction for genomic prediction. Dr. Howard teaches statistical methods for MS and PhD students in agronomy, animal science, engineering and related fields.
University of Florida
United States
Dr. Carlos Messina is a professor of predictive breeding in the Department of Horticultural Sciences. Dr. Messina works with breeders to improve the nutritional value of Florida produce and to reimagine agriculture as a solution to climate change. He also specializes in developing AI for plant breeding, which he believes will enable society to harmonize crop improvement efforts for regenerative agricultural systems that improve human health, nutrient security and adaptation to climate change.
University of Florida
United States
Kati Migliaccio started in 2005 at the UF/IFAS Tropical Research and Education Center focusing on water conservation, considering quality or quantity, and hydrology with a goal to identify realistic and sustainable solutions. She applied engineering principles to better manage water to meet growing population needs under increasing water supply uncertainty – considering climate change, disrupters in the system, and competing water users. Dr. Migliaccio has experience in different types of systems, including agricultural, natural, and urban. As a faculty member, she was instrumental in developing some of the first Smartphone Apps for irrigation management that incorporated crop specific models and linked to real-time data.
University Hohenheim, Germany
Hans-Peter Piepho main interests are related to statistical procedures as needed in plant sciences, crop breeding and cultivar testing. These include genomic prediction, spatial methods for field trials, design of comparative experiments, models for genotype-environment interaction, and network meta-analysis. Moreover, he has various collaborations with researchers in different branches of the agricultural sciences. In most of his research, mixed model procedures form the methodological backbone.
University of Florida
United States
Simon received his BSc in Agricultural and Environmental Sciences from McGill University in 2010, his MSc in Agronomy (agroecology concentration) from the University of Florida in 2018, and his PhD in Agronomy from the University of Florida in 2025.
University of Wisconsin-Madison
United States
Guilherme Rosa obtained an M.S. in Animal Sciences from Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), Brazil, in 1994, and a Ph.D. in Statistics and Agricultural Experimentation from the University of Sao Paulo (USP), Brazil, in 1998. He began his professional career as a faculty member in the Department of Biostatistics at UNESP (1994-2001) before relocating to the USA as a faculty member at Michigan State University (2002-2006) and eventually joining the faculty at UW-Madison in 2006. Currently, he holds the position of Professor in the Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences, with an affiliate appointment in the Department of Biostatistics & Medical Informatics.
Dr. Rosa’s work involves teaching courses and conducting research on statistical and computational tools for analyzing livestock data, including beef and dairy cattle, swine, poultry, and other species. His research applications encompass the analysis of farm-level operational data to optimize management practices, high-throughput phenotyping techniques for real-time monitoring of individual animals and disease surveillance, as well as quantitative genetics/genomics and breeding. To date, Guilherme has authored 13 book chapters and over 250 refereed papers in scientific journals. He has also secured external grants totaling over $14 million to support his research programs.
USDA-ARS
Dr. Yeater is a Statistician for the Agricultural Research Service where she provides consultative support to research scientists on the development and implementation of scientific studies, sampling methodology, and data analysis. She is actively involved in working with researchers in developing and presenting inferences from statistical results as well as consulting and training a diverse group of research personnel.
Cargill
Neil Paton is an applied statistician employed at Cargill, a private multinational agribusiness company. Over a 25+ year career he has been responsible for applying the science of statistics to data generated at Cargill’s global agricultural experiment stations. Current areas of statistical activity include General Linear Models, Generalized Linear Mixed Models, DOE, classical statistical consulting and research systems design and management. He is married with children and lives on a farm in Ohio. Neil has been involved with the Applied Statistics in Agriculture Conference for 15+ years.
University of Idaho
Julia Piaskowski is a statistician at the University of Idaho, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Piaskowski provides resources to support high quality analysis of agriculture studies and adjacent research. Piaskowski views herself as a 'user advocate' attempting to bridge the gap between complex statistical methodologies/tools and what users actually need to use those. Additionally, she is a Software Carpentries certified instructor.
Utah State University
United States
Dr. Brennan Bean is an assistant professor of statistics at Utah State University. He is an applied statistician with a primary focus on the effective use of environmental data to improve decision making in civil engineering and water resource management contexts.
US Department of Agriculture
United States
Nora Bello currently serves as Area Statistician for the US Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service in the US Northeast Area. She obtained her DVM degree in her native Argentine, and later pursued graduate studies at Michigan State University, including MS degrees in Animal Sciences and in Statistics, as well as PhD.
Throughout her academic and government career, Dr. Bello developed extensive experience working collaboratively with scientists across agriculture, veterinary medicine and the biological sciences in various capacities. Her research interests focus on hierarchical models —including both Bayesian implementations and their frequentist counterparts, mixed models—, their development and advancement, as motivated by compelling applied problems. Closely connected interests also include experimental design and data architecture in both randomized and observational studies.
Universidad de la República
Uruguay
Natalia Berberian holds a BS in Statistics and an MSc specializing in Biostatistics from Universidad de la República, Uruguay. She is currently a PhD student and a faculty member in the Department of Biometry and Statistics at the Faculty of Agronomy, Universidad de la República, Uruguay, where she conducts research on statistical methods and their applications in agronomy.
Cornell University
United States
Currently, Professor and Chair, Department of Statistics and Data Science, Cornell University. Formerly a Faculty member, Department of Statistics, University of Florida, 1987-2004. PhD Statistics, University of Kentucky, 1987. BSc Mathematics, University of Leeds, England, 1982.
Corteva Agriscience (Currently Position) / Abstract Work (The Ohio State University)
United States
Dr. Wanderson Bucker Moraes is a Research Scientist–Statistician at Corteva Agriscience, specializing in statistical methodologies for crop protection research. He holds a Ph.D. in Plant Pathology and Statistics from The Ohio State University, where he developed statistical methods for managing Fusarium head blight in wheat. His expertise includes Bayesian analysis, spatial-temporal modeling, risk assessment, and network meta-analysis, aiming to develop strategies to promote crop health.
Utah State University
United States
NA for poster.
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Spain
Julian is a PhD Candidate in Quantitative Genetics at the Technical University of Madrid, Spain. As a visiting scholar, he has been working with Dr. Jarquin on multi-omics integration for predictive models. Last year, Julian completed a PhD residency at Google, where he developed AI methods for private clients in the agriculture business.
Agronomy College, Universidad de la República
Uruguay
Dr. Pablo González Barrios holds a PhD in Plant Breeding and Plant Genetics from the University of Wisconsin. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Biometry and Statistics Department at the Agronomy College, Universidad de la República, Uruguay. This work presents the results of MSc student Guillermo Sniadower, co-supervised with Dr. Lucia Gutiérrez in Uruguay’s master’s program.
North Carolina State University
United States
Emily Griffith is a Professor of the Practice in the Department of Statistics and the Director of Analytics Consulting in the Data Science and AI Academy at NC State University. Dr. Griffith is an expert in applied, collaborative statistics and data science. She was elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2023. She develops strategies to further innovation in the university’s data science initiatives. She earned her PhD in Statistics from NC State University.
Corteva Agriscience
United States
Yushan Gu earned a Ph.D. in Statistics from Iowa State University in 2024. Since 2023, Yushan has been a data scientist at Corteva, focusing on providing statistical solutions for regulatory science projects.
University of Florida
United States
I am a Postdoctoral Associate working with Dr. Zotarelli in the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida. My research interests lie at the intersection of crop growth modeling, nutrient-water management, climate change, and digital agriculture for sustainable agricultural development.
University of Wisconsin - Madison
United States
Dr. Gutierrez is a Professor in Cereals Breeding and Quantitative Genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned her Ph.D. from Iowa State University, postdoc at the Biometrics Unit at Wageningen University, and a Professor in Statistical Genetics in Uruguay before joining UW-Madison.
Embrapa Arroz e Feijão
Brazil
I am a researcher at the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), Rice and Beans Unit. My expertise is in Agronomy, specializing in crop modeling. I focus on using crop growth simulation models to support decision-making in irrigation, crop management, and breeding of annual crops.
Iowa State University
United States
Benjamin Jacobs completed his BS in Statistics at the University of Iowa 2018, followed by an MS in Statistics in 2019. He then worked as a Biostatistician at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, WI, until enrolling to pursue a PhD in Statistics at Iowa State University in 2022.
University of Florida
United States
One of the biggest challenges of the humanity is to ensure the current and future food supply chain of a growing population in a world that is facing more often and extreme environmental variations. The contributions of Dr. Jarquin research program are relevant to the society because these are helping to the development of improved (more productive, resistant to biotic and abiotic stress, etc.) genotypes by the integrating artificial intelligence (AI) methods and multi-omics analyses in plant breeding. Dr. Jarquin's program is focused on the development of interpretable AI methods and related disciplines (biostatistics, quantitative genetics, and modeling) that can be applied to large multi-omics data sets for providing solutions to complex plant breeding and plant systems biology questions. More specifically, these developments are oriented to find new ways of driving genetic improvement and biological insights designing and optimizing methods for plant breeding, leveraging information from multiple facets of plant biology—physiology, agronomy, and biochemistry to quantitative genetics and multi-omics (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and high throughput phenotyping), and provide novel solutions to unravel the biological basis of complex traits for plant breeding programs.
Kansas State University
United States
Dr. Josefina Lacasa is an agronomist and statistician currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at Kansas State University.
Georg-August University
Germany
Dr. Thomas Martin Lange studied agriculture at the university of Göttingen (Germany) where he did his PhD in breeding informatics under Prof. Dr. Armin Schmitt and Prof. Dr. Mehmet Gültas in cooperation with KWS in 2023. Since then he is employed as a postdoc in the breeding informatics group where he is researching possibilities to optimize prediction models for genomic selection in plant breeding.
Palomar Specialty Insurance
United States
James David Long (JD Long) is the CTO at Palomar Specialty Insurance. He is a perpetual cocktail party host, open source fan, econometrician, agricultural economist, and OReilly Author.
Iowa State University
United States
My name is Payton (she/her). I am interested in the intersection of ecology and statistical analysis, specifically with ecological statistics. I hope to one day work in an academic role and continue to make an impact in the statistical community.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
United States
Dr. Paccioretti is a Professor of Statistics at the Agricultural College of the National University of Córdoba, Argentina. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Agronomy and a PhD in Agricultural Sciences, both from the National University of Córdoba. Currently, he is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln where he focuses on on-farm experimentation and data analysis. His primary research interests include the application of statistical methods in precision agriculture.
University of North Dakota / USDA-ARS
United States
Daniel Palmer was formerly employed as a Statistician at the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center (University of North Dakota) and federal contractor with the United States Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service. He holds a Master of Science degree in Applied Statistics from North Dakota State University.
Iowa State University
United States
Vinny is a statistics Ph.D. student at Iowa State University with research in experimental design with interests in bias protection. Fun Trivia: He has been to 23 national parks.
University of Arkansas
United States
Dr. Poncet is an Assistant Professor of precision agriculture and remote sensing. She has experience working with high-resolution spatial and temporal data. Her research focuses on the development of best management practices for optimized crop management.
Emory University
United States
Lokendra Singh Rathore is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Environmental Sciences Department at Emory University. His research focuses on the food-water nexus, climate impacts, and sustainable agriculture. He applies hydrological modeling, machine learning, and statistical analysis to study water security and agricultural sustainability. He holds a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Alabama.
USDA Agricultural Research Service
United States
Quentin Read has been the Southeast Area statistician with the USDA Agricultural Research Service in his home state of North Carolina since 2021, where he consults and teaches statistics to scientists across a nine-state region. Before joining USDA, Quentin studied environmental science at UNC-Chapel Hill, earned a PhD in ecology from the University of Tennessee, and did interdisciplinary research at Michigan State University and the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center in Maryland.
North Carolina State University
United States
Mara Blake is the Head of the Data & Visualization Services (DVS) department and the lead for data science consulting in the Libraries at NC State University in the Libraries. Blake brings expertise in development and delivery of academic library data consulting and services, as well as multi-institutional collaborative efforts on data science. She holds an MS in Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
University of Florida
United States
Currently a Ph.D. Student in Genetics and Breeding from Federal University of Viçosa (Brazil), and a Research Scholar at the University of Florida working on Jarquin’s Lab, focusing on integrating and applying statistical methods to optimize plant breeding programs. Holds a Master’s degree in Genetics and Breeding from University of Viçosa (Brazil), and a Bachelor in Agronomy from UNICENTRO (Brazil). Experienced and interested in statistical methods applied to plant breeding.
Iowa State University
United States
Rebekah Scott is a statistics MS student at Iowa State University and will be this May. She has received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Statistics from Utah State University. Rebekah’s research has focused on optimal design of experiments and developing clustering algorithms. She has completed two internships at Los Alamos National Laboratory and another at Dugway Proving Grounds. Outside of statistics, her hobbies include being outside, math puns, and raising her one-year-old son.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
United States
Walt Stroup is a University of Nebraska-Lincoln Emeritus Professor of Statistics. He served on the University of Nebraska statistics faculty for over 40 years, specializing in statistical modelling and statistical design. He is author or co-author of three books (each with multiple editions) on mixed models and their extensions. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, winner of the ASA’s 2024 W.J. Dixon Award for Excellence in Statistical Consulting and the University of Nebraska’s 2020 Outstanding Teaching and Innovative Curriculum Award.
University of Nairobi
Kenya
Togba V. Sumo is an agricultural economists and researcher. He holds a MSc degree in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Nairobi in Kenya and a BSc degree in Economics from the University of Liberia. He works as a National Consultant for Responsible Agriculture Investment and Statistics at the Food and Agriculture Organization engage in project management and capacity development. He has also work with Data-Pop Alliance and Break Through Actions Liberia and IPA.
Texas A&M University
United States
Shili W is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A\&M University, College Station, USA. He received his B.S. degree from Case Western Reserved University and M.S. degree from Columbia University. His research Interests includes reinforcement learning and control application. He is also interested in applying the machine learning techniques into biography. He has authored several papers in these areas and is an IEEE member.
University of New South Wales
Australia
Xiao is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Risk and Actuarial Studies and an Accreditation Actuary. Her research focuses on actuarial practice, financial risk management, and education technology. Before joining UNSW in 2020, she worked in life insurance, consulting, and venture capital. She holds a PhD from UNSW, an MSE from Johns Hopkins, and a BBA from Wisconsin-Madison, along with multiple professional designations, including CFA, CA, FIAA, CPA, FRM, FSA, and CERA.
USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
United States
Linda J. Young is Chief Statistician and Director of Research and Development at USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (or NASS). Alex Tarter is a member of the Sampling and Estimation Research Section within the Research and Development Division of NASS.