Congratulations go out to Sarah Jones and Juan Panelo for winning the 2024 C.R. Weber Award for Excellence in Plant Breeding. 

Sarah Jones, originally from College Station, Texas, is a Ph.D. Candidate in Plant Breeding in the Soynomics group at Iowa State University. 

Studying with Dr. Danny Singh, she researches phenotyping strategies to improve drought tolerance breeding in soybean. Sarah earned a B.S. in Horticulture Science with a minor in Spanish from Texas A&M University and her M.S. in Plant Breeding with Dr. Arti Singh and Dr. Danny Singh at Iowa State University, where her research resulted in two co-first author papers (Explainable DL for Charcoal Rot Identification and  Hyperspectral Imaging for Early Disease Detection). She interned at the Antique Rose Emporium, a rose breeding company in Texas, worked on a discovery team at Monsanto, and served as a staff member in two programs including the vegetable breeding program at Texas A&M University and the Singh soybean breeding program at Iowa State University. Sarah gained breeding experience in over 12 crops from high value horticultural crops and ornamentals to agronomic row crops.

Sarah has held multiple leadership positions at Iowa State University including serving as a Co-chair for the 2021 Raymond F. Baker Plant Breeding Symposium and volunteering with the Women in Agriculture and Artificial Intelligence (Women in Ag and AI) club to teach kids and the wider community about artificial intelligence in agriculture. 

Juan Panelo is originally from Mar del Plata, Argentina. He earned his B.S. in Agriculture from the National University of Mar del Plata at Balcarce, 

Argentina, where his interest in plant breeding began. After this bachelor’s degree, he pursued a M.S. in Crop Production at the same university, working in spring wheat. His research focus in Argentina was on physiological breeding, studying physiological traits associated with yield potential and crop protection. Juan joined Iowa State University to pursue his Ph.D. in Plant Breeding in Dr. Maria Salas lab. In addition, he also joined the Predictive Plant Phenomics specialization. His research focused on understanding the genetic control of canopy architecture dynamics and crop growth patterns in sorghum, integrating high throughput phenotyping, genomics, and statistical modelling with an ecophysiological approach. Part of his work has been recently published in the article, Genetics of canopy architecture dynamics in photoperiod‐sensitive and photoperiod‐insensitive sorghum, in the Plant Phenome Journal. He presented his work at the PAG meeting, the ASA-CSSA-SSSA meeting, and the NAPB meeting, and the Raymond F. Baker Plant Breeding Symposium.

Juan took leadership roles in several student organizations at ISU. To highlight some, he served as a Co-chair for the 2022 Raymond F. Baker Plant Breeding Symposium; as Social Chair in the Agronomy Graduate Student Club during 2023; and as the Graduate and Professional Student Senate Treasurer during 2023. In his free time, Juan enjoys hiking, biking, and grilling with friends.