People

Mark Lundy is Associate Professor of Cooperative Extension and Grain Cropping Systems Specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis. He has broad expertise in agricultural systems and farmer decision making, alongside specialized knowledge of agronomic research and modeling at field and regional scales, including precision N management, plant-soil sensing technologies, nitrogen and carbon cycling, and genotype x environment x management interactions. He works with a wide range of stakeholders and partners, including farmers, agricultural consultants, policy makers and scientific peers, to develop and deliver scientific information and user-facing agricultural innovation. He earned a Ph.D. in Agronomy and a M.S. in International Agricultural Development from the University of California, Davis and a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Arizona.

Maya Shydlowski grew up in San Jose, California, and graduated from UC Davis in 2022 with a BS in Plant Sciences and a minor in Professional Writing. She has a background in science education and communications and spent time working with the California Wheat Commission as an intern. Maya started with the lab as an undergraduate assistant in 2021 and worked with UC Cooperative Extension after college before coming back to Davis as a graduate student in 2023. Her graduate work focuses on using remote sensing technology to estimate crop nitrogen status and determine nitrogen use efficiency in grain cropping systems.

Taylor Nelsen is from North Carolina where she graduated from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill with a BS in Environmental Science and a BA in Geography in 2016. She has been a part of various research teams, modeling the spread of disease in dairy herds, mapping food deserts and investigating the microbiological control of mites in Pichincha, Ecuador. Working with the NC Botanical Gardens and the NC Department of Agriculture Taylor has experience managing a variety of native species as well as crops. Taylor started as a graduate student in the Grain Cropping Systems Lab in September 2016. Her research focuses on nitrogen management in malting barley and aims to collect data with traditional agronomic methods in conjunction with many new technologies such as proximal sensing devices, high resolution imagery and GIS.

Kalyn Diederich is originally from Fort Collins, Colorado, where she earned her B.S. in Soil and Crop Sciences with a minor in Organic Agriculture. After her education at CSU and her experiences serving as a student farm manager, interning on a diversified organic farm, and assisting with research at the USDA-ARS, Kalyn knew she wanted to pursue a graduate education in soil and agricultural science. In this pursuit, she moved to the Midwest where she received her Master’s degree in Agroecology and Soil Science in 2017 at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kalyn’s research experience at UW-Madison exposed her to perennial grain crop development, which lent the opportunity to conduct research on two topics she is passionate about simultaneously — soil health and innovative agriculture. As of January 2018, Kalyn started her Ph.D. with the Lundy and Scow labs where she will be investigating whether the newly developed multipurpose perennial grain crop known as Kernza is a viable agronomic crop for the state of California. This investigation aims to analyze and compare Kernza’s N balances, grain yield, above and belowground biomass, microbial biomass and composition, and soil carbon sequestration potential to that of annual wheat across a series of nitrogen and water gradients over the next four years.

Santiago Tamagno was born in Rosario city (Argentina). He studied Agronomy (2013) at the National University of Rosario, where he began to work as an undergraduate research assistant in maize field experiments and also earned his MS in Plant Breeding and Genetics in 2015. During this period, he gained extensive knowledge of maize ecophysiology and response to abiotic stress, management, and nitrogen nutrition. After graduating from his MS, Santiago started his Ph.D. at the Agronomy Department at Kansas State University. His dissertation explored different aspects of soybean crop physiology related to nitrogen nutrition with emphasis on biological nitrogen fixation and its impact on seed yield and seed composition. His research aims to develop a better scientific understanding of nitrogen (N) balance as an agronomic and environmental indicator in sustainable agriculture.

Former Graduate Students and Research Staff

Micah Levinson, USDA Sustainable Agricultural Water Systems Research

Karla Estrada, USDA Sustainable Agricultural Water Systems Research

Taylor Herbert (Becker), MS Horticulture and Agronomy, Extension Educator, University of Minnesota

Leah Puro, MS International Agricultural Development, Agricultural Research Coordinator, Wolfe's Neck Center for Agriculture & the Environment

Michael Rodriguez, PhD Candidate, Environmental Sciences, University of California, Riverside

Ethan McCullough, California State Parks

Salvador Grover, MS Candidate, Agroecology, University of Wisconsin

Nicholas George, PhD, Lecturer, Curtin University

Jessica Schweiger, MS, Master Gardener Coordinator, Penn State University

Former Student Interns and Student Assistants

Valerie Wong, Leo Reynoso, Maya Shydlowski-Besmer, Kiana Lee, Aubrey Kimball, Serena Lewin, Raiya Zerrouk, Maria Sandate-Reyes, Steven Spivak, Jonathan Slocum, Eric Williams, Jessica Henriquez, Quinn Levin, Rosanna Moe, Katy Mulligan, Rika Fields, Ryan Byrnes, Jason Tsichlis

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