Faculty

Zachary Leasor

Aug. 30, 2023

Zachary Leasor

Zack is an assistant professor in climate science within the School of Natural Resources. He also works as State Climatologist and director of the Missouri Climate Center. He serves on panels dealing with adverse weather conditions such as drought and flooding. He also works with the National Weather Service offices and regional climate services to provide climate data and prepare special summaries of significant weather and climate events.   Originally from Louisville, Ky., Zack spent the last several years living in Columbus, Ohio, before moving to Missouri during the summer of 2023. Zack received a bachelor’s degree in meteorology, with a…

Alex Stichnote

Aug. 9, 2023

Alex Ebbesmeyer

Alex serves as the academic advisor for the agricultural education and leadership, and hospitality management programs.

Dojin (DJ) Ryu

July 26, 2023

Dojin (DJ) Ryu

Educational background Ph.D., Food Science and Technology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1997 M.S., Food Science and Human Nutrition, University of Missouri, 1992 B.S., Food Science and Technology, Korea University, Seoul, Korea, 1989…

July 5, 2023

Jaime Barros-Rios

The Barros laboratory is dedicated to conducting both fundamental research and applied biotechnology to tackle global challenges such as food security, climate change and the sustainable production of energy and commodity chemicals. Our work in the lab revolves around three main objectives: Enhancing stress tolerance, forage quality and CO2 sequestration in food and feed crops. Developing bioenergy crops to achieve sustainable production of fuels, chemicals and bioproducts. Generating trees with improved properties for the production of paper pulp. The primary focus of our research lies in understanding the metabolic processes related to plant cell wall composition, specifically…

Stephanie McKay smiling.

June 30, 2023

Stephanie McKay

The overarching goal of the McKay lab is to utilize the latest advances in biotechnology while developing new methodologies and resources to determine the extent to which epigenetic and epitranscriptomic modifications contribute towards economically important traits in livestock. While many epigenetic modifications exist, her current research focus is on 5-Methylcytosine, 5-Hydroxymethylcytosine and N6-Methyladenosine. The context in which her lab studies these modifications include neuroepigenomics, comparative epigenomics and functional annotation. Educational background Ph.D., University of Alberta M.S., Texas A&M University B.S., Texas A&M University…

Amy Petry smiling.

June 5, 2023

Amy Petry

Petry is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Animal Science at the University of Missouri, where she leads the MU Monogastric Nutrition Research Lab. Her lab utilizes basic and innovative science to develop, advance, or improve applied nutrition solutions. Her team’s research themes encompass: 1) enhancing fiber utilization and its impact on energy and health benefits in swine diets, 2) exploring the interactions between diet and physiology at a whole-body level, 3) optimizing energy and nutrient supply during homeorhetic states, and 4) developing nutritional biomedical pig models. In 2020, Dr. Petry earned her Ph.D. from Iowa State University.

Ruojie Vanessa Zhang

May 23, 2023

Ruojie Vanessa Zhang

Educational background Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Amherst…

Shibu Jose smiling.

May 15, 2023

Shibu Jose

Shibu Jose serves as the associate dean for research in CAFNR and as the director of the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station. Previously, he was the director of the School of Natural Resources at the University of Missouri. He has also served as the H.E. Garrett Endowed Chair Professor and director of the Center for Agroforestry at the University of Missouri (2009-2017) and Professor of Forest Ecology at the School of Forest Resources and Conservation at the University of Florida (1998-2009) in the past. Jose received his bachelor’s degree from Kerala Agricultural University, India, and his master’s degree…

Portrait of Jeff Case

May 12, 2023

Jeff Case

Andre Froes de Borja Reis

April 5, 2023

Andre Froes de Borja Reis

Andre FB Reis is the statewide specialist in soybean farming systems and joined the division of Plant Science and Technology in 2023. Educational background Ph.D., Crop Science, University of Sao Paulo (Brazil) M.S., Crop Science, Federal University of Tocantins (Brazil) B.S., Agronomy, University of Sao Paulo (Brazil)…