As always the summer has flown by and we find ourselves asking - where did the time go???  As we round out the end of our summer undergraduate researchers time in lab, we wanted to take some time to recognize them for their awesome achievements! This summer we had two incredible teams of summer undergraduates - the biology team and the engineering team. We are going to miss these awesome people so much!!!!  

Olivia is a Plant Science undergraduate here at UD.  She has been with the lab since early 2020 and stuck with us through the pandemic. This summer she was awarded a College of Agriculture and Natural Resources Unique Strengths summer fellowship!  Her summer research looked at the expression of maize mechanosensitive ion channels (MSL) in aerial and subterranean brace roots. 

Miranda is a Plant Science undergraduate here at UD.  This summer she tackled the challenges of working on our maize and sorghum fields. She tirelessly labeled plants, bagged sorghum, weeded our fields, and took meticulous phenotyping notes for postdoc Ashley Hostetler's project!   

Talia is a Plant Science undergraduate here at UD.  In a deviation from our normal work, Talia brought her own project to the lab! Talia has been investigating the metabolite profiles of two different pomegranate cultivars. She received the McNair Summer Scholars award to support this work.  Special shoutout to Dr. Nox Makunga (Stellenbosch U) and Dr. John Chater (U Florida) who have made this summer project possible through providing protocols, pomegranates and helpful discussions!

We had an awesome team of engineers contributing to our work this summer. From left to right:  Joe Cristiano is an undergraduate in Electrical and Computer Engineering here at UD; Anthony Jiang is an undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering here at UD;  Parker Grobe is a 4+1 who is about to start his MS degree in Mechanical Engineering here at UD.  I cannot say enough about how critical this team has been to our summer successes!  They tackled a slew of problems - from our version of ROS no longer being supported to designing and building new test frames and so much more.  

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!

​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).