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The Potato Leadership, Education and Advancement Foundation (Potato LEAF) has awarded a $10,000 scholarship to Thilani Jayakody, a third-year graduate student at Michigan State University. The scholarship is awarded annually to one graduate student with a strong interest in research that can directly benefit the U.S. potato industry.
As a Ph.D. candidate and graduate research assistant, Jayakody’s research involves connecting her interest in genome editing to the applied goals of Michigan State’s breeding program. She is currently working to reduce the effects of enzymatic browning through gene editing and working to understand the accuracy of new genome editing platforms, as these off-targeting effects are a major regulatory concern in accepting genome-edited food crops, according to Jayakody.
