Stockbridge Undergraduate Faculty : Stockbridge School of Agriculture : UMass Amherst

Allen Barker

Undergraduate & Graduate Faculty Professor—Plant & Soil Nutrition, Professor of Plant and Soil Sciences

(Not Currently Accepting New Graduate Students)
SERVICE
Head of Department, Plant and Soil Sciences, 1977-1985
Graduate Program Director, 1977-1985

Sarah Berquist

Program Coordinator for Sustainable Food & Farming Bachelor of Science Program (On Campus)

Senior Lecturer for Sustainable Food & Farming

Sarah Berquist currently teaches courses in the Sustainable Food and Farming undergraduate program. Sarah offers contemplative and participatory courses in farm-based agriculture education, social justice, food systems, and personal sustainability.

She is excited to equip students with practical life skills: the ability to grow their own food, confidence in leading others, community organizing, and critical thinking to solve problems. Experiential learning is at the heart of her teaching philosophy and she loves getting her hands dirty with her students in the field.

Kristina Bezanson

Associate of Science Program Coordinator—Arboriculture and Community Forest Management, Lecturer in Arboriculture and Urban Forestry

Management of the undergraduate program in Arboriculture & Urban Forestry, including advising students; student recruiting on and off campus.

Amanda Brown

Director of UMass Student Farm and Agricultural Learning Center, and Senior Lecturer; Undergraduate Faculty—Sustainable Food & Farming

Amanda is currently the director of the UMass Student Farming Enterprise Program and the Stockbridge School of Agriculture's Agricultural Learning Center. Amanda joined the Stockbridge faculty after working with the UMass Extension Vegetable Program for over a decade.

Nicole Burton

Director of Stockbridge Livestock Program, Undergraduate Faculty—Farm Animal Husbandry, Lecturer

Nicole Burton has over 20 years of experience in the field of agriculture and is currently the director of the Stockbridge Livestock Program (SLP) at the Agricultural Learning Center. The objective of this program is to train the next generation of livestock farmers to gain hands-on experience working with sustainable livestock systems. Currently, the program raises turkeys on pasture and integrated into silvopasture systems, broilers on pasture, sheep in a chestnut silvopasture and pigs rotationally revitalizing a woodland. SLP allows students to also take the next step in production with legal poultry slaughter, and the marketing and finances of these production systems. This program involves the courses taught as well as a collaboration with the UMass Student Farm and the Carbon Farming Initiative.

Renee Ciulla

Program Coordinator for Sustainable Food & Farming Associate of Science Program (Online)

Senior Lecturer for Sustainable Food & Farming Online

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Daniel Cooley

Former Associate Director and ProfessorEmeritus of Plant Pathology, Fruit Pathology

I am currently retired from active research and UMass Extension work, though I am continuing to do some teaching and administrative work post-retirement. I am no longer accepting graduate students.

My work focuses on the ecology of plant diseases and the impacts their management have on environmental and human health. It is focused on commercial fruit production in the northeastern US, but has national and international impact. The primary goal is to reduce fungicide use in apples and other crops by applying an understanding of ecology and modern technical tools. As part of this, I work on disease forecast models and web-based decision support systems for delivering information to growers. My extension work centers on promoting adoption of more environmentally and economically sustainable production methods such as IPM. I teach courses in plant disease management and the ecology of food, agriculture and disease., and am affiliated with the School of Earth and Sustainability, the Environmental Science program, and the Plant Biology program.

Michael Davidsohn

Associate of Science Program Coordinator—Landscape Contracting, Senior Lecturer II of Landscape Architecture

Stockbridge School of Agriculture Landscape Contracting Program Coordinator. Michael teaches within the Landscape Contracting, Bachelor's in Landscape Architecture and Master's in Landscape Architecture programs.

Michelle DaCosta

Program Coordinator for Turfgrass Associate and Bachelor Programs; Applied Plant & Soil Sciences Bachelor Program

Professor of Turfgrass Physiology

My research program is centered on gaining greater insight into physiological mechanisms of plant adaptation to environmental stresses, using perennial grasses as an experimental system. Our goal is to identify plant traits and stress response pathways associated with tolerance to different environmental stresses that are relevant in terms of global climate change, including temperature extremes and drought. In addition to addressing fundamental questions on mechanisms of abiotic stress resistance, we also conduct applied research to help guide turf industry professionals on the selection of stress-resistant grass species and cultivars, and to aid in the development of best management practices aimed at reduced water, fertilizer, and pesticide use.

Lisa Depiano

Undergraduate Faculty—Permaculture, Senior Lecturer

Lisa Depiano is a lecturer in sustainable agriculture. She teaches courses in permaculture and her interests include carbon farming, specifically silvopasture with hybrid Chestnuts, and establishing food forests on public land. “For over a decade she has taught permaculture to hundreds of students in dozens of courses in the United States and abroad, including the Permaculture Women’s Teacher Training. She runs the Mobile Design Lab which specializes in participatory permaculture design and installation and serves as a board member for the Permaculture Institute of the Northeast. Her public permaculture installations include the grey water system at Occupy Wall Street and the Lee Street Forest Garden in Cambridge.”

Om Parkash Dhankher

Undergraduate & Graduate Faculty—Molecular Biology, Phytoremediation; Professor

Prof. Om Parkash Dhankher is a plant/agriculture biotechnologist. His research focus is multidisciplinary in nature ranging from crop improvements, environmental remediation to biofuels. Along with strong research in engineering plants for detoxification and phytoremediation of heavy metals, his laboratory is developing arsenic free and arsenic tolerant food crops in order to improve human health using both forward and reverse genetic approaches. Prof. Parkash Dhankher was the first one to develop the transgenic plant based approach for arsenic phytoremediation by combining the expression of two bacterial genes, arsenate reductase- ArsC and γ-glutamylcysteine synthase- γECS, in plants. Further, he characterized the first plant arsenate reductase, AtACR2, from Arabidopsis using the RNAi knockdown approach. His research team is also engineering crops via manipulating key pathways and network of genes responsible for enhanced tolerance to multiple abiotic and oxidative stresses and GSH homeostasis for improving crop yield under changing climate conditions. Additionally, his lab is involved in metabolic engineering of oil seed crops such as Crambe abyssinica, Camelina sativa and Brassica juncea for increased oil yields for biofuels production and specialized biopolymers for industrial uses. Prof. Parkash Dhankher has extensively published his research work in high profile journals including Nature Biotech, PNAS, The Plant Cell etc. and has several patents awarded to him based on his research findings. His research has been widely publicized in numerous leading national and international newspapers (e.g. USA Today, Salt Lake Tribune, The Ottawa Citizen (Canada), Le Monde (France), Indian Express (India) etc.) and science magazines (e.g. The Scientist, National Geography, Science Daily, MIT Technology Review, Geotime, La Recherche (France), Down to Earth, Terragreen etc.). His research has also been featured in headlines on National Geographic Channel, ABC, Reuters, and PBS online project “How we Get to Next” with Steven Johnson etc.

John Gerber

Program Coordinator for the ONLINE Sustainable Food & Farming Bachelor of Science Program

Professor of Sustainable Food & Farming

John teaches courses relating to sustainability at the University of Massachusetts where he provides leadership for the online program in Sustainable Food and Farming. He continues to investigate ways in which students explore personal growth and community responsibility through service, dialogue, and contemplation. His greatest professional joy is to watch young people find their calling (especially when it relates to local food and farming). He was instrumental in helping to initiate student projects at UMass such as the Permaculture Initiative, the Student Farm, GardenShare, the UMass Hydrofarm, and the Real Food Challenge. He received the highest honor awarded a teacher at UMass in 2008 with the University Distinguished Teacher Award.

Masoud Hashemi

Undergraduate & Graduate Faculty—Sustainable Agriculture, Soil Health, and Sustainability; Extension Professor; Graduate Program Director

(Not Currently Accepting New Graduate Students)
My research activity is mainly focused on sustainability of farming systems through diversified cropping systems. I am specifically interested in integrating cover crops into farming systems to enhance nutrient recovery and recycling, weed suppression, and improving general soil health. My other research focus is pasture management including grazing systems and strategies to extend grazing season.

Stephen Herbert

Undergraduate & Graduate Faculty—Sustainable Agriculture, Professor of Agronomy

(Not Currently Accepting New Graduate Students)

Rachel Hestrin

Undergraduate & Graduate Faculty—Plant-Microbe Interactions, Assistant Professor

I am broadly interested in plant-microbe-soil interactions and ecosystem response to change. Much of my lab’s research focuses on rhizosphere and hyphosphere processes that influence productivity, stress tolerance, organic matter dynamics, and nutrient cycling. Our work spans multiple scales and approaches—from isotope-enabled genomics and cellular imaging to multi-farm field trials. We seek to answer questions such as: How do microbes mediate plant nutrient acquisition and carbon allocation below ground? Do mycorrhizal fungi recruit functionally distinct microbial communities that confer different benefits to their hosts? How are plant- and fungal-derived soil organic matter inputs affected by environmental conditions or agricultural management? Which management practices facilitate beneficial plant-microbe interactions?

Geunhwa Jung

Undergraduate & Graduate Faculty—Turfgrass Pathology, Professor of Turfgrass Pathology and Plant Breeding & Genetics

Professor Jung's research interests include: Molecular mechanisms of fungicide resistance in Sclerotinia homoeocarpa, structure and dynamics of soil microbes on organic and conventional managed golf courses, management of fungicide resistance in dollar spot on turfgrass, mapping of quantitative disease resistance traits in turfgrass and comparative genomics analysis in Poaceae species, and classical and molecular breeding of disease resistance in turfgrass

Ashley Keiser

Undergraduate & Graduate Faculty—Soil & Ecosystem Ecology, Assistant Professor

Dr. Keiser is an ecosystem ecologist working at the interface of plant and soil microbial communities across both forested and agricultural systems. Her lab’s approaches integrate local, mechanism-driven questions that help advance ecological theory regarding soil microbial community function (i.e. litter decomposition) and landscape-level biogeochemical inquiries that link ecosystem function with land management decisions. Overall, the lab works to expand our understanding of how soil microbial community function, exhibited through carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics, will change with shifting plant communities, land management regimes, and climate.

Olga Kostromytska

Undergraduate & Graduate Faculty—Turfgrass Entomology, Extension Assistant Professor

Olga Kostromytska is an entomologist working with insect pests of turfgrass (primarily) and landscape plants. Her research expertise spans areas of insect behavior, insecticide toxicology, chemical and biological insect controls, and host-plant resistance strategies.

Jianyu Li

Undergraduate and Graduate Faculty—Extension Assistant Professor of Sustainable Fruit and Vegetable Production

Jianyu Li is an Extension professor focused on advancing sustainable agriculture via organic nutrient management and plant nutrition for fruit and vegetable production, as well as resource optimization in controlled environments like greenhouses.

Hannah Naughton

Undergraduate & Graduate Faculty—Soil Biogeochemistry, Assistant Professor

Professional Activities
2022 Session Convener, American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, Biogeosciences Division: “Biogeochemical Cycling in the Critical Zone: From Genomes to Ecosystems”

Elsa Petit

Program Coordinator for Horticulture Associate and Bachelor of Science Programs

Senior Lecturer in Viticulture and Plant Pathology

Agriculture is one of the contributor to climate change and diminishing biodiversity. The goal of my research is to better understand plant-microbe interactions to help make agriculture one of the solutions to climate change and increase biodiversity. My model system is grape species and its associated microbes in the Northeast US, one of two grape's biodiversity centers. I contrast cultivated crops and their wild relatives to quantify the impact of human management on microbial dynamics and study disease resistance variations. I lead the Extension program for Grape production in Massachusetts, connecting academic research and grape growers. I also teach General Plant Pathology and Sustainable Grape Production and one large course for senior under-graduate students on Global Issues in Applied Biology.

Jaime Piñero

Program Coordinator for Sustainable Food & Farming Associate of Science Program

Extension Professor of Fruit Entomology and Integrated Pest Management

I hold a three-way appointment that combines research, Extension, and teaching. Applied research needs to be conducted before it can be extended to producers. My research focuses on applied aspects of insect-plant interactions as a basis to develop more sustainable pest management tools and strategies in fruit orchards. More specifically, my research seeks to develop behaviorally-based pest management tools such as attract-and-kill systems that are based on information from insect sensory ecology and behavior. Examples include odor-baited trap trees for plum curculio, mass trapping for Japanese beetles, and bait stations for invasive and native fruit flies. My research also seeks to integrate chemical, behavioral, and biological methods in insect control and a better understanding on the ecology of pests and their natural enemies.

My Extension program delivers timely and relevant research-based IPM information to fruit growers using a variety of methods. Through Extension activities, I seek to increase the level of awareness and adoption of IPM components by growers and to document impacts derived from my Extension activities. Successful adoption of IPM should lower input costs and decrease pesticide use, leading to increases in growers’ profit margins while decreasing the negative environmental impact associated with pesticide misuse and the risk of resistance. A list of grower-oriented articles is presented at the bottom of this page.

Stephen Simkins

Undergraduate Faculty—Soil Microbiology, Associate Professor

Baoshan Xing

Director of Stockbridge School and University Distinguished Professor, Undergraduate & Graduate Faculty—Environmental & Soil Chemistry

Our research in Environmental & Soil Chemistry focuses on the protection of our environment through maintaining/improving soil and water quality. Particular interests include: (1) environmental behavior and agricultural application of engineered nanomaterials, (2) analysis and environmental processes of micro(nano)plastics, (3) interactions between organic compounds and carbonaceous materials/mineral particles, (4) characterization and use of organic matter and biochar, and (5) food safety.