Katie Sheehan-Lust

MS Thesis: Genotype × Environment Analysis, and SNP Validation and Trait Association of Rubus spp.

Comments:

Gina Fernandez (Hort Teaching Faculty)

First, I want to share the story of how Ms. Lust arrived in NC. In 2019, Katie was looking for a M.S. program in berry breeding. She was working in California for a large commercial marketer and through some mutual colleagues, she contacted me. I encouraged her to come to NC to check out our small program and the Raleigh area. She planned to do so in early 2020. As everyone knows by March 2020, travel was restricted, and she was unable to come for a visit. However, she decided to attend NCSU sight unseen in the fall of 2020. She traveled across the country to a place she had never been before, to work with a person she had never met, during a time where traveling across the country involved keeping yourself distanced from other people and taking Covid tests. It takes a lot of courage to do this in normal times, and she did it in very abnormal times and ultimately flourished.

Katie was an excellent student and did extremely well in her courses. Her major was Horticultural Science with a minor in statistics. Her research was a result of a collaboration between Pairwise, a local biotech company and 6 public/private caneberry (raspberry and blackberry) breeding programs. Her research was composed of 2 projects with the species in the genus that contains blackberries and raspberries, Rubus. Although she had worked in the California berry industry in the past, she had very little experience with caneberries. However, she learned fast, asked questions and was quick to observe key growth characteristics of the genus.

Katie will be pursuing her PhD in berry breeding at the University of Arkansas.