Purdue Agriculture InFocus

Fall 2019 New Faculty Welcome
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Welcome to these faculty members who joined us in Fall 2019:
Shawn Ehlers
Shawn Ehlers, Clinical Assistant Professor, Agricultural and Biological Engineering. Dr. Ehlers earned his PhD in agricultural and biological engineering from Purdue, with a specific focus in agricultural safety and health. Prior to being named to the faculty, he held a post-doctoral position with the National AgrAbility Project, where he served as the national technology outreach coordinator. He developed technical resources and identified products to assist farmers and ranchers with disabilities to regain the ability to perform agricultural tasks with a heightened level of independence.
 
Laura Ingwell Laura Ingwell, Assistant Professor of Horticulture Entomology, Entomology. Dr. Ingwell received her Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, her Masters of Science in Ecology from the University of Rhode Island, and her PhD in Entomology from the University of Idaho. Prior to her new faculty position, she had been a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Entomology since 2014. She is a member of the Indiana Small Farm Conference Committee, where she is working to engage with diverse small farmers by providing educational sessions to improve production and facilitate conversations around increasing diversity in agriculture. Dr. Ingwell's research has focused on managing insect pests and insect transmitted pathogens in high tunnel cucumber, cantaloupe and tomato production and investigating the impacts of pesticide use on pollinator communities in these systems.
 
Jacob Hosen Jacob Hosen, Assistant Professor, Internet-of-Things and Ecological Analytics, Forestry and Natural Resources. Dr. Jake Hosen uses high frequency sensors to study how microbes and environmental change influence ecosystem functions and water quality. Before joining FNR, he was a postdoctoral associate at the University of Florida and Yale University. Dr. Hosen has a B.Sc. in chemistry and biology from the College of William and Mary and a Ph.D. in behavior, ecology, evolution and systematics from the University of Maryland. At Purdue, Dr. Hosen will leverage internet of things technology to deploy environmental sensors networks that will provide real-time sensing for predictive ecosystem models.
 
Todd Kuethe Todd Kuethe, Associate Professor and Schrader Endowed Chair in Farmland Economics, Agricultural Economics. Dr. Kuethe earned his PhD in agricultural economics from Purdue and most recently served as a clinical assistant professor of land economics at the University of Illinois. He conducts research on farm real estate markets, agricultural finance, and agricultural policy. He is also a consultant in the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and an associate editor of Agricultural Finance Review. Dr. Kuethe spent several years as an economist with the USDA Economic Research Service in Washington, DC, where he contributed to a number of USDA reports on farm real estate markets and agricultural policy.
 
Elizabeth Long Elizabeth Long, Assistant Professor of Horticultural Entomology, Entomology. Dr. Long received her BS in biological sciences from North Carolina State University and her PhD in plant, insect and microbial sciences from the University of Missouri. She was a Post-Doctoral Associate in Entomology from 2013-2016. Dr. Long has spent the last three years as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Entomology at The Ohio State University. Her research centers around three key themes: (1) addressing the consequences of human-mediated change to the environment for ecosystem services and function, (2) building our understanding of the impacts of biodiversity loss, and (3) evaluating the unintended impacts of agricultural management on non-target organisms in agroecosystems and surrounding areas.
 
Mindy Mallory Mindy Mallory, Associate Professor and Clearing Corporation Charitable Foundation Endowed Chair of Food and Agricultural Marketing, Agricultural Economics. Dr. Mallory earned her BS in math education and MS in mathematics from Emporia State University and her PhD from Iowa State University. Before coming to Purdue, Dr. Mallory was a faculty member at the University of Illinois. She researches commodity prices, how futures markets transfer risk, pricing discovery and efficiency, and how futures contract and exchange design impacts market outcomes. She also studies how to bring concepts such as risk mitigation and risk transfer into nontraditional settings such as the conservation of resources.
 
Stephen Meyers Stephen Meyers, Assistant Professor, Horticulture and Landscape Architecture. Dr. Stephen Meyers’ research and extension efforts focus on weed management in specialty crops. Before joining the faculty in HLA, he was associate extension/research professor and sweet potato extension specialist at Mississippi State University, where he conducted practical crop production, pest management, and value-added research to address stakeholder concerns and needs. He earned his B.Sc. in horticultural sciences from Purdue and his M.S. and Ph.D. in horticultural sciences from North Carolina State University. He will conduct research in weed biology, weed-crop interactions, herbicide tolerance, and integrated weed management strategies and provide specialty crop producers with timely, research-based weed management recommendations.
 
Alex Pasternak Alex Pasternak, Assistant Professor, Animal Sciences. Dr. Pasternak earned his PhD in the Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science at the University of Alberta. He then served in postdoctoral positions in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization and the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Pasternak’s area of research is in reproductive biology.
 
Ankita Raturi Ankita Raturi, Assistant Professor, Agricultural and Biological Engineering. Dr. Raturi works on agricultural informatics, in particular, human-centered design, information modeling, and software engineering, for increased resilience in food and agricultural systems. She earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, and her MS in informatics and PhD in software engineering from the University of California, Irvine. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Sustainable Agricultural Systems Lab at USDA ARS in collaboration with North Carolina State. Dr. Raturi’s work includes the development of modular, open source, decision support tools; designing a reconfigurable data pipeline for on-farm participatory research; and information modeling for the development of domain-relevant data services.
 
Aaron Smith Aaron Smith, Assistant Professor in Insect Systematics and Director of the Purdue Entomological Research Collection, Entomology. Dr. Smith has a dual Ph.D. in Entomology, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Michigan State University; four years of postdoctoral experience in systematics and taxonomy at Arizona State University and the American Museum of Natural History; and for the last three years was an Assistant Professor of Evolutionary Ecology and Systematics at Northern Arizona University. He also served as Curator of the Colorado Plateau Museum of Arthropod Biodiversity. The primary taxonomic focus of his research has been on reconstructing the phylogeny and evolutionary history of darkling beetles (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae), a morphologically and ecologically diverse lineage of beetles with approximately 20,000 currently described species and tens of thousands more awaiting description.