About the Lab
Current Members:
Permanent Members
Jacob Washburn (PhD) 
Harper LaFond (MS) 
Harper LaFond joined the Washburn Lab in 2022 as the lab technician. She received her B.S. in Fisheries and Wildlife and her M.S. in Plant, Insect & Microbial Sciences specializing in entomology, both at the University of Missouri – Columbia. Harper has enjoyed working an array of field technician jobs with all sorts of living things from bugs and birds of prey to sturgeon and river carp. She then worked at the University of Missouri, Grape and Wine Institute as the viticulture extension specialist before joining the maize group at the USDA (she only works with crops that can be fermented into tasty drinks). Harper enjoys listening to podcasts on her walks to and from work, cooking dinner with her husband and sharing the leftovers with their dog, Chase.
Raymond Wright 
Post Docs
Tyler McCubbin (PhD) 
Tyler is a plant scientist with training in crop physiology and molecular genetics. He is interested in plant adaptation to natural and agronomic stress, and leveraging genetic diversity to improve plant resilience for a changing climate.
Worasit Sangjan (PhD) 
Worasit’s research focuses on integrating engineering and data science with plant science to advance plant phenomics research. He leverages remote sensing platforms, including proximal sensing, IoT-based systems, drones, and satellites, with various sensor types to collect multi-scale data for phenotyping in plant breeding programs. His current focus is on developing a program enhancing individual plant detection in maize using drone imagery. More information can be found on his LinkedIn, Google Scholar.
Daniel Kick (PhD) 
Daniel’s research centers on using deep learning and computational approaches to make the most out of biological data, e.g. by using deep learning to capture how yield in influenced by the complex relationships between genetic, environmental, and management factors. He also runs technical trainings, a deep learning group, and publishes notes and retrospectives here. More information can be found on his website, danielkick.com.
Graduate Students
Shawn Thomas 
Shawn’s dissertation research focuses on using comparative genomics and phylogenomics to understand the evolution of mustard crops and their wild relatives (tribe Brassiceae) with respect to a shared ancient polyploidy. He is also affiliated with the Bioinformatics and Analytics Core at MU and works on various genomics projects for faculty investigators across MU.
Emma Leary 
Emma is in the Plant, Insect, and Microbial Sciences PhD program at the University of Missouri. She works as a USDA-ARS Graduate Student Research Fellow and seeks to determine how different maize genotypes, landraces, and wild relatives perform photosynthesis under cold conditions. This work will ultimately help in developing elite maize cultivars that thrive in early season cooler settings.
Undergraduate Researchers
Morgan Mathison
Morgan Mathison joined the lab in May of 2023 as an undergraduate research assistant. She currently is a senior at the University of Missouri studying Plant Science with an emphasis in Breeding, Biology, and Biotechnology. She is also completing a minor in Biology and a certificate in Floral Artistry and Management. She has a passion for plant ecology, evolution, and conservation. Her current research focuses on using drone imaging in order to evaluate cross environmental conditions in maize.
Henry Bloch 
Henry is a junior in computer science who has been gaining experience in plant science. He has a special focus on distributed systems with high-throughput phenotyping operations.
Past Members:
Post Docs
Piyush Pandey (PhD) 
Undergraduate Researchers
Grace Sidberry 
Madi Mitchell 
Madi can be found here.