2026 Colorado State University Plant Adaptation Symposium

Beth Rowan grew up combing the foggy beaches of Carmel, CA, digging up crabs, shells and seaweed. This general interest in nature sparked her interest in pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of San Diego and later, a Ph.D. from the University of Washington. She conducted research on plant genetics, genomics, and genome editing at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany and UC Davis in Davis, CA before returning to the Pacific Northwest and becoming an assistant professor of plant biotechnology at Oregon State University. Her research program is focused on using in vitro techniques and biotechnology to support the development of new traits for specialty crops both by facilitating traditional breeding approaches and by employing new genetic technologies. Aspects of her program involve the development of transformation methods, directly editing one or more genes to determine if they cause a specific trait, making changes to genes that modify the rates of genetic reshuffling via meiotic recombination, and other applications of plant tissue culture. Her lab also employs high-throughput sequencing and computational analysis to investigate the genetic basis of traits to inform the selection of engineering targets. With one foot in the hypothesis-driven basic science research and the other in applied biotechnology and engineering, she aims to generate practical knowledge that will enable us to make desired improvements to specialty and horticultural crops. When she is not in the lab, she enjoys running, cycling, and hiking with her two children. She still loves digging up things at the beach.

Dr. Cris Argueso received a Bachelor’s in Biology and Master’s in Plant Genetics from Campinas State University, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, working on maize and rice genetics of amino acid metabolism. She received a PhD from Cornell University in Plant Biology, where her research was on systemic acquired resistance and salicylic acid signaling. That was followed by postdoctoral work in the lab of Joe Kieber, at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, on plant hormone biology and signaling. During her postdoc Dr. Argueso discovered that cytokinins can act as priming agents against disease, through crosstalk with the salicylic acid pathway. At Colorado State her lab focuses on mechanisms of hormonal crosstalk, and how they regulate many aspects of plant growth and stress tolerance, and how engineering of phytohormonal crosstalk can be used to achieve specific outcomes of plant stress resilience and growth.

Dr. Argueso currently serves on the editorial board of the journal The Plant Cell as Senior Editor, is an official advisor for the Department of Energy on plant biology research as a member of the Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee (BERAC), is an elected member of the North American Arabidopsis Steering Committee (NAASC), and until recently advised the National Science Foundation on Plant Physiology as a program director in the Integrated Organismal Systems Division.