Conner joined the lab in 2023 as a PhD student. He completed his bachelor’s in sustainable agriculture and his master’s in plant health management at Ohio State University in the US. This has given him an interdisciplinary background that brings together both the STEM side of agriculture and the social and economic aspects. He dreams of designing practical, integrated solutions for farmers to make agriculture more environmentally and economically sustainable in the developing dryland regions of the world. He has completed previous research and advanced study in soil health and soil carbon as well as in plant pathology (with emphasis on soybean cyst nematode). While he has great hope for research, Conner is driven to fulfill Norman Borlaug’s call: “Take it to the farmer,” so he hopes to take his plant breeding research here and make it practical for farm families in their own contexts.