Shawn Jenkins

With the goal of helping the worlds food supply become more abundant, resilient, and sustainable, I am passionate about agricultural research and product development. In my current role, I investigate the application of proximal phenotyping technologies when used in conjunction with genomic and environmental datasets to develop descriptive and predictive models of soybean water productivity through machine learning algorithms. Our work is focused for application in plant breeding and aims to help improve the rate of genetic gain in cultivar development programs. My passion for agriculture stems from my upbringing on a family farm and has been deepened through multiple research positions working with soybeans, corn, and small grains. I have experience planning, executing, and analyzing field trials, breeding nurseries, and disease nurseries for multiple research programs along with coordinating technical aspects of both regional and national cooperative germplasm evaluation projects. I have a strong personal interest in leveraging novel technologies and research to help solve emerging agricultural challenges. You can contact me directly at jenkins.shawn.douglas@gmail.com.