Spring Seminar: Guest speaker Dr. Piero Barone - March 25th, 12-1:00pm
Talk title: "Cultivating Innovation: The Future of Agriculture through Genome Editing"
Piero Barone earned his PhD from the University of Perugia, Italy, focusing on the cytological and molecular characterization of a female sterility trait in alfalfa and during an exchange program with the University of Georgia, he developed transgenic alfalfa lines for aluminum tolerance. In 2003, he joined the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, as a Postdoctoral Research Associate, working on a novel selection system for nuclear and plastid transformation. In 2008, he became a Research Scientist at Chromatin, designing and validating selection and transgenic event regeneration protocols for corn, sorghum, and sugarcane. In 2014, he joined Dow AgroSciences' Monocot Transformation Team, focusing on maize trait discovery projects and managing transformation programs using the Zinc Finger gene targeting tool. In 2018, Piero joined Corteva Agriscience in Johnston, where he is currently the Capability Leader of the Genome Editing group in the Biotechnology Function of Corteva R&D. He is currently the President of the Society for In Vitro Biology.