Detecting and responding to environmental perturbations is one of the most important distinguishing features of plants. I am interested in how plants integrate the dynamic environmental inputs into developmental issues, such as architecture regulation, phase transition and stress response. During my Ph.D, I worked on a pleiotropic QTL gene Ghd7 which has large effects on heading date and yield potential in rice, under the supervision of Prof. Qifa Zhang, Huazhong Agricultural University.

In May 2014, I joined Prof. Juenger's lab to investigate grass developmental genetics. My research focuses on QTL mapping and GWAS in the C4 grass species Panicum hallii, which is an emerging model system that shares a close evolutionary relationship to the biofuel crop switchgrass. I am also combining genetics, biochemistry and molecule biology approaches to study the molecular mechanisms of how plants perceive and respond to multiple environmental signals in both Panicum hallii and Arabidopsis. The ultimate goal of my project is to better understand the growth of switchgrass and provide avenues for improving biomass yield and stress tolerance for use as a bioenergy crop.