Research Areas

About the Danforth Center Summer Intern Research Areas

Founded in 1998, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center is home to more than 130 scientists who are conducting fundamental research with short-, mid- or long-term applied goals. Research team leaders, referred to as Principal Investigators, have strong interdisciplinary research skills with diverse training and are committed to collaborations between research groups within the Danforth Center and with researchers across the globe.

• Douglas Allen
  Analysis of metabolic networks of oilseed plants to enhance biomass composition by combined experimental and computational methods.
  
  
• Rebecca Bart
  Mechanisms and genomics of plant-microbe interactions in cassava and other plants
  
  
• Ivan Baxter
  A systems approach to elemental profiling to understand how plants adapt to the environment.
  
  
• Thomas Brutnell
  Understanding photosynthetic differentiation and, in particular, identifying the transcriptional networks that drive C4 photosynthetic development and improving yield in existing C4 crops such as maize, sorghum and sugarcane.
  
  
• James Carrington
  Understanding how small RNA is utilized by plants to silence genes in controlling growth, development and viruses defense.
  
  
• Dan Chitwood
  Studies on the genetic basis of natural variation in plant morphology, developmental biology, and high-throughput phenotyping
  
  
• Andrea Eveland
  Gene regulatory mechanisms controlling plant architecture traits in cereal crops
  
  
• Malia Gehan
  Plant response to temperature stress and development of high-throughput phenotyping technologies
  
  
• Toby Kellogg
  Diversity in wild grasses and how that helps understand cereal crops.
  
  
• Toni Kutchan
  Medicinal Natural Products: Synthesis of Morphine and other medicinal plant products for treatment of a variety of diseases.                                                                                                               
• Blake Meyers
  The function, biogenesis, and evolution of small RNAs and how these impact reproductive biology in plants; disease resistance genes; bioinformatics
  
  
• Todd Mockler
  Genomic and computational approaches to understand how growth, yield and biomass production are affected by plants’ responses to stress, light and day length.
  
  
• Dmitri Nusinow
  Understanding how the circadian clock is integrated with environmental signals to control plant growth, physiology and development.
  
  
• Sona Pandey
  Plant hormone signaling: Abscisic acid and drought response.
  
  
• Dilip Shah
  Fungal Resistance - Role of defensins in enhancing plant fungus defense.
  
  
•  Chris Topp
  Image-based phenotyping and statistical genetic approaches to understanding the role that root systems play in developing more sustainable and productive crops.
  
  
• James Umen
  Cell biology of algal growth, proliferation, reproductive evolution and development.
  
  
• Sam Wang
  Lipid signaling-Role of lipids in regulate plant growth and stress responses.
  
  
• Ru Zhang
  Understanding how photosynthesis interacts with environments by using algal genomics and plant spectroscopy.