The Sparks lab turned THREE this summer, and time has flown by.  While we were  not able to celebrate in person due to the covid-19 pandemic, we still virtually celebrate this milestone and cannot wait to be back together for a belated celebration.

The lab has been shuttered since early March, and we are slowly returning to research. The first step has been - moving!  We are still in the process, but the bulk of our lab moved to the STAR campus this past week.  We are still waiting for chemicals and cold storage to move, but hopefully we can resume some research in mid-July (as long as we can ensure that we do this safely). 

Other news includes the migration of our lab website to braceroots.com!  It has been a labor of love to migrate our website and it is finally ready for release.  We hope you visit our site often, as we promise to continue updating content.  

A fantastic undergraduate, Nick Insley, was also awarded a Delaware Space Grant NASA summer internship!  While not exactly the project we had originally planned, we were able to pivot Nick to a virtual summer project!  Sarah Blizard successfully defended her MS thesis in June, but will stay on for another semester to finish experiments that were cancelled due to the pandemic.  Huge congratulations to both Nick and Sarah!!!

Last, but certainly not least, we have been reflecting on diversity and inclusion. This includes additional discussions about how we can ensure the lab is an inclusive place, and educating ourselves about systemic racism and how the academy contributes to these problems.  We believe that

and pledge to become better allies by uplifting and amplifying under-represented voices, continuing our education on racism, diversity and inclusion, and speaking out when we see or experience injustices. 

Originally posted on May 4, 2020

Since our last post, there have been significant changes to the world. So first, we hope that everyone is staying safe and well!  We are all hanging in there, and Erin couldn’t be more proud of how well the lab has adapted to the work-from-home transition.  We have a weekly coffee hour just to check in and while we miss seeing everyone in person, we are glad to be doing our little part to slow the spread.


The work from home has allows for some exciting new opportunities and our awesome team members continue to shine!

• M.S. student Sarah Blizard was able to present her work in the remote Plantae Seminar Series last week.  If you missed it, the talk is available on YouTube here. Although her last experiments were cut short due to the covid19 pandemic, Sarah made great progress and is set to defend her Master’s in June.
• PhD student Lindsay Erndwein has been busy working on a paper resubmission, so look out for that to be posted on bioRxiv soon. She was also award a scholarship from the National Corn Growers Association to support her work on how plant herbivory affects biomechanics. Congratulations to Lindsay!

Other than that we are sorting through mountains of data we have collected on the contribution of brace roots to plant biomechanics the past couple of years.  We are working to synthesize this data for a deeper understanding of lodging-resistance and hope to be able to inform future plant improvement!  Be on the look out for some exciting new data from our lab soon.


In more good news, we are welcoming Dr. Ashley Henderson to the lab as a postdoc starting June 1st.  Ashley just finished her PhD at West Virginia University with Dr. Jennifer Hawkins.  Ashley brings a wealth of experience in sorghum, genetics and abiotic stress tolerance to the lab, and we are so excited for her to join the team. She will be working to expand our understanding of brace roots from maize to sorghum!
We look forward to seeing you all in the near future!

Originally posted on March 4, 2020

Happy Spring Semester!  The Sparks lab has had a busy and productive start to 2020!  If you wonder what we’ve been up to, here is a preview…

​First, for some personnel changes. At the end of January we were sad to say farewell to lab technician Noah Ouslander. Noah was the first undergraduate in the Sparks lab and stayed on for ~2 years as a technician.  He was instrumental in getting the lab running and we are sad to see him go. BUT Noah is now pursuing his passions in cannabis cultivation and we wish him the best in the next stage of his career!

Some major milestones were accomplished by the lab members in the past few months. MS student Stephen Smith received a College of Agriculture and Natural Resources Unique Strengths Fellowship to transition into the PhD program this coming Fall!  Stephen has really hit the ground running with his projects and we are excited he will stay for a PhD. MS student Sarah Blizard wrote a review on Maize Nodal Roots that was accepted at Annual Plant Reviews Online! The review is being copy edited now and should be available in May.
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Postdoc Dr. Adam Stager and Dr. Sparks made a second visit to CIRAD in Montpellier France as part of the lab’s Thomas Jefferson Fund project. They spent the first week at the iCropM conference, followed by a side event organized by Dr. Sparks and Dr. Christophe Pradal on Phenotyping and modeling of plant anchorage and physiology. This 2-day workshop highlighted the challenges in the field and featured excellent talks from a wide variety of scientific disciplines. The second week was spent updating and refining a plant mechanical model that will be used to identify brace root ideotypes for anchorage.  In the last phase of this project, Dr. Pradal and Dr. Christian Fournier will visit the University of Delaware in July!

Originally posted on December 16, 2019

Happy Holidays from the Sparks lab!
Things are going well here in Newark!  We had a new MS student, Stephen Smith, join us from the Bioinformatics program. Stephen will be working on the Environmental aspects of root growth and development and we are excited to have him on board.  We will also have a MS student from Chemical Engineering, Rickey Egan, visiting the lab during Winter Term for a fun mini-project on oil palm.  As the group continues to grow we are grateful for the talent and enthusiasm of all our team members.


In granting news, we received funding from the University of Delaware Research Foundation Strategic Initiative Award in collaboration with Dr. Monique Head in Civil Engineering to start exploring the structural mechanics of corn using her expertise as a bridge engineer. This work will kick off in January, so stay tuned for pictures and updates on our collaboration. We further received funding from the Delaware Biosciences Center for Advanced Technology in collaboration with Dr. Alyssa Koehler, Plant Pathologist. For this work, we are partnering with a Delaware corn producer to study pythium infections and develop mitigation strategies for the Mid-Atlantic.  We are delighted by this research support and excited to continue working with wonderful partners.


Research-wise, we are trying to sort through the mountains of data that we collected from the field over the summer.  As you all know, data analysis is an iterative process. For our field-based mechanical testing to understand brace root function, we took a second look at our data and decided maybe there is a better way to analyze it!  So back to the drawing board.  We are committed performing a robust analysis and that means spending time with our data and understanding all of the nuances.  We’re optimistic to have this analysis completed in early 2020, so we can tell you more about how brace roots function to stabilize plants and what makes a brace root good at it’s job.


Other research areas continue to progress as we continue to develop new technologies and explore their function in understanding plant growth dynamics. We are particularly excited about the “Plant Pusher” developed by a team of UD Engineering Senior Design students.  These students went from idea, to concept, to functional prototype in one semester.  We are blown away by their aptitude and progress. The goal of the project was to develop an automated platform for mechanical testing in the greenhouse.  We are currently using this device to compare the mechanics of plants grown in the field versus greenhouse to finalize a methods paper on this topic.  While several field-based mechanical testing devices exist (see our recent review on arXiv), the application of these devices to the greenhouse is limited.  This device will allow us to test plants under abiotic and biotic stresses that we cannot perform in the field.  This has expanded the potential research applications exponentially.


Other than that we are gearing up for our move to a new building in early 2020!  We are excited for the new space and to be closer to our colleagues in Agriculture.  We’ve also added a new section to the lab website of Lab Pictures, so check it out. We will work to keep it updated with pictures of our science and fun happenings.
We wish you all a happy and relaxing holiday season and a joyous new year!

Originally posted on September 20, 2019

Once again a post that starts with “where has the time gone”.  I don’t know how time flies so fast, but it’s already Fall!  Welcome to pumpkin spice everything (it really should be a national holiday). It was a busy summer in the Sparks lab as we embarked on our 3rd field season. Things seemed to run a little smoother this year then they have in the past (fingers crossed I didn’t just curse us).  I got an email the other day saying it was my 3rd field season, so I should have everything figured out – HA!  Maybe add a zero to that… Surely I will have it figured out by my 30th field season. 🙂
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In addition to our regularly scheduled research, we hosted Dr. Mandy Rasmussen in the lab for a couple of months this summer. It was a busy trip, but very productive.  Mandy introduced her expertise in physiology to our lab and we are hoping to have some exciting mechanics/physiology results soon. We also managed to submit a grant together and outline a couple of papers.

People-wise the Sparks lab welcomed a new postdoc in the mix in September – Adam Stager. Adam is probably familiar to you already. He’s been working with us as a graduate student in Mechanical Engineering for the past 2 years and we are delighted that he’s joining us for a postdoc.  After major field-prep, Adam did the first deployment of our brace root phenotyping robot. There are still some kinks to be ironed out, but overall a successful first run!

​This post is part of a migration of posts from our previous website.

Originally posted on June 10, 2019

Wow – where has the time gone??? June 1st marked UD’s graduation and the 2nd birthday of the Sparks lab.  This past year has flown by.  After a year without any teaching responsibilities, Dr. Sparks spent her second year in course development land!  Last Fall it was a split undergraduate/graduate course on Plant Development and this Spring was an undergraduate course on Controlled Environment Agriculture.  While incredibly different, both courses offered Dr. Sparks the chance to become a better instructor and opportunities to get to know the amazing graduate and undergraduate students here at UD.  Now that teaching has wound down for the year, we can take a short breather and plow right into field season!

We had some really exciting results from last field season that suggest the brace root contribution to plant anchorage varies with genotype. This summer we aim to repeat these experiments and get some of our field-based phenotyping robots deployed. Science is chugging right along.  We submitted two pre-prints this past year (Erndwein et al., https://doi.org/10.1101/547794 and Stager et al., arxiv.org/abs/1903.10608) and are hoping to get some more of our data out there ASAP!  Dr. Sparks should be working on the figures now, but is likely procrastinating…perhaps by writing a blog post… 😉

We absolutely cannot wait for the summer ahead.  Dr. Amanda Rasmussen from the University of Nottingham will be visiting for a few months (July-Sept) to show us the beauty of root physiology.  We’re so excited to combine our mechanical results with her physiology approaches. In addition, PhD student Lindsay Erndwein and Dr. Sparks will be headed to Montpellier, France for an exciting collaboration with Dr. Christophe Pradal, and we hope to welcome a new Postdoc into the lab this summer. However, all of this excitement means we will not be traveling to many of our favorite meetings this year. We are sorry to miss you, but will catch you again next year!

​We wish you all a bountiful beautiful summer and may the maize be ever in your favor.  😉




​P.S. Dr. Sparks spent an amazing 2-weeks visiting Agriculture Victoria this past May, so here is a Koala for your viewing pleasure.

As we close out the end of a busy summer, the Sparks lab is gearing up for a great school year.  In June we celebrated the first birthday of the Sparks lab and had a great gathering of friends and collaborators. We are all excited to see what this second year brings.

First lab news is of departures and arrivals.  We said farewell to our summer undergraduates a few weeks ago, as well as Hyeon-Hye Norikane who was instrumental to helping get the lab up and running.  We were also able to welcome Noah Ouslander as a lab tech. Noah worked in the lab as an undergraduate for the past year and we’re excited to have him working full-time. Another new addition is Sarah Blizard, who joins us as a Master’s student after working as a lab technician for the past few years.  We are so excited for the future of the Sparks lab!

Other lab news involves grant funding! We’ve been fortunate enough to receive seed grant funding for our research from NASA, the University of Delaware Research Foundation, and the Delaware Biosciences CAT program.  In addition, in collaboration with Dr. Christophe Pradal, we were awarded a Thomas Jefferson Fund award to promote US-French collaborations. Funding includes support for a 1-month stay for PhD student Lindsay Erndwein in Montpellier!  Lastly, in collaboration with Dr. Ullas Pedmale, we received a NSF grant (#1755355) to look at the Mechanisms of Light Control of Root Growth. We are beyond grateful for the support of these funding agencies and can’t wait to see the results from these projects.
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Other than that we are collecting and processing data. We hope to have our first research publications out early next year, so stay tuned… This promises to be a busy Fall with students taking classes and Dr. Sparks teaching Plant Development and Departmental Seminar. More updates soon!  Hope everyone has a great semester!

​This post is part of a migration of posts from our previous website.

Originally posted on May 10, 2018

The first spring in Delaware for the Sparks Lab has been lovely!  As the semester comes to an end, we thought to share some of the great things happening to our group and what’s on the horizon…

First, congratulations go out to PhD student Lindsay Erndwein for her acceptance and scholarship to attend the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories Frontiers and Techniques in Plant Science course!!!  We are so excited that Lindsay will become an alumni of the @CSHLplantcourse and can’t wait to hear all of the amazing things she will learn.

Second, a big congratulations to undergraduate Sarah Kubat for winning a University of Delaware College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences Unique Strengths summer internship!  Sarah is a Plant Sciences major and has been working with us since the start of Winter Term. We are so excited that she will get to spend the summer in the lab thanks to this amazing opportunity.

Another new addition to the lab is undergraduate Kyle Ebersole who is joining us for the summer from Hagerstown Community College.  Kyle will be working with Nathan Harlan for the summer and we are super excited for his contributions to the lab.
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Lastly – be on the look out for Sparks lab members at meetings near you this summer.  Erin, Nathan, Lindsay, and Wenbo will be at the Mid-Atlantic ASBP meeting.  Nathan, Lindsay, and Wenbo all have posters so if you are at the meeting, come check out their work!  Then Erin and Nathan will be at the “big” ASPB Plant Biology Meeting in Montreal. Nathan will again be giving a poster, so come see the great work he is doing.  Erin will be giving talks at the Plant Biomechanics meeting in Montreal, and the International Association for Plant Biotechnology in Dublin this summer. Lots of travel and excitement for the Sparks lab this summer. 🙂
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Keep our eye out for our next post… “The Sparks Lab First Birthday” (yes, we are having a party).

Originally posted on April 27, 2018

On Saturday April 14th, Dr. Sparks was honored to participate in the inaugural Sussex County Delaware STEM “Engineering Your Tomorrow” event for 6th-8th grade girls. This amazing event featured interactive activities – Dr. Sparks and Dr. Megan Killian coordinated a robotic hand activity where girls learned about biomechanics and motion – drone and robot demonstrations, a rousing speech by the First Lady of Delaware – Tracey Quillen Carney, Dr. Sparks as the key note speaker, and so much more!  During her key note address, Dr. Sparks talked how much she didn’t like science when she was in middle school and her journey to become a scientist. In particular, she recalled that when she was the age of these girls, she took a “career survey” that told her she would be nothing when she grew up! She hopes that her story was inspirational to these young girls and is overwhelmed and grateful for the opportunity to participate in this great event.  For news coverage and video from the event please click below.
Sussex County Engineering Your Tomorrow 2018

We especially want to thank Cindy Isaacs, the lead event coordinator; Michele Walfred, the volunteer media guru; and Adam Stager, who let us borrow his robot for demonstrations!  The girls loved running the robot off the tables and taking selfies with the forward facing camera!

Originally posted on April 5, 2018

As they say – “when it rains it pours”, and in the Sparks lab it is pouring amazing new team members!  This month we welcome Wenbo Zhao to the lab as a Master’s student.  Wenbo comes to us from the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology graduate program, and has an interest in Data Mining and Text Mining.  Wenbo will be co-advised with Dr. Cecilia Arighi and Dr. Chuming Chen, who will provide him with amazing guidance on building databases and data mining.  We are excited for the new and different skillsets that Wenbo will bring to the lab.
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We also just finished interviewing PhD candidates to join the lab this Fall.  We were lucky to have three excellent candidates come visit us in Newark, and are excited that one of them will be joining us this Fall.  All of the paperwork is in the works, and we will follow up with an official announcement after everything is completed. So, be on the lookout for another update soon!