Purdue Agriculture InFocus

Spring 2023
Join us in welcoming these new
Purdue Agriculture faculty members.
Moriah Bilenky
Moriah Bilenky, Assistant Professor, Horticulture and Landscape Architecture. Dr. Bilenky joins the HLA department this spring from Penn State University, where she conducted post-doctoral research on sustainable and organic cropping systems. She plans to continue exploring low-input, sustainable cropping systems in her research program at Purdue, with particular interest in the use of cover cropping, reduced tillage and animal-crop integration to reduce off-farm inputs. One of her personal career goals will be to find an equine related connection to her work and research.
Kyle Cottrell
Kyle Cottrell, Assistant Professor, Biochemistry. Dr. Cottrell joins the Biochemistry department from Washington University in St. Louis, where he began his graduate studies in 2012. He completed his PhD in molecular cell biology in December 2017, staying at the university to conduct post-doctoral research in several aspects of post-transcriptional regulation in cancer, including RNA editing. Dr. Cottrell’s past research has focused on post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression, including control of mRNA translation and stability as well as RNA editing. In his current research, he is focused on RNA editing, how it is regulated in cancer and the potential of targeting an enzyme involved in RNA editing to treat breast cancer. 
Pratishtha Poudel
Pratishtha Poudel, Assistant Professor, Agronomy. Dr. Poudel joins the Agronomy department from Kansas State University, where she completed her post-doctoral fellowship with research focusing on the development and application of crop models. In her current work and research, she seeks to bring together the disciplines of crop physiology, data science and mathematical modeling to advance cropping system models. Striving to be a lifelong learner, Dr. Poudel enjoys learning about other countries, languages and cultures.
Hinayah Rojas
Hinayah Rojas, Assistant Professor, Animal Sciences. Dr. Rojas first came to Purdue in 2019 through a one-year postdoctoral appointment, studying genetics. After spending the last few years working as a research geneticist at Lactanet, a Canadian network for dairy excellence, Dr. Rojas returns to the Animal Sciences department to continue her work in researching genetic and genomic analysis of complex traits. She is interested in the prediction of novel traits using Neural Artificial Networks and in the development of new statistical methods and models to maximize the rate of genetic progress over time.