Dr. Brian McSpadden Gardener received his Ph.D. in Botany from Michigan State University in 1998. He began work in the field of biological control of plant pathogens as an ARS postdoctoral fellow under the guidance of Dr. David Weller. He joined the faculty at the Ohio State University in 2001 where he currently serves as an Assistant Professor. His research focuses on defining the diversity, population dynamics, and ecological functioning of microbial populations that colonize crop plants. Particular emphasis is given to studying Pseudomonas and Bacillus spp. with potential for development as biopesticides.

Current Lab Members

Graduate Students

María-Soledad Benitez is a graduate student in the Department of Plant Pathology at The Ohio State University under Dr. McSpadden-Gardener's supervision. She is studying the relationships between suppressiveness and phlD producing Pseudomonas spp. in organic farming systems. She obtained her undergraduate degree of Biological Sciences at the Universidad Católica in Quito, Ecuador. Her interests are in microbial ecology, specifically in relation to changes in microbial population structure as it relates to the functioning of agricultural and natural ecosystems.

Rosa Raudales is a graduate student in the Plant Pathology Department. She received her B.S. in Agriculture Science and Production from Zamorano College in the year 2003. Prior to becoming a Master's degree student, she worked on applied agriculture and farm production practices in Ginsheim, Germany and then at the Integrated Pest Management Program at The Ohio State University. Her current research interests  focus on soil ecology and their effects on plant production.

Technicians and Undergraduate Assistants

Seth Maurer is a current undergraduate student at the College of Wooster majoring in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He plans to attend Medical School upon graduation. His current project is to test potential biofungicides generated from bacterial strains.

Jefferson Amstutz is a 2008 graduate of Wooster High School and plans to attend Grove City College to study physics to pursue a career in Aerospace Engineering. His current project is the evaluation of the biocontrol potential of different bacterial strain formulations. He also helps with other tasks, including work on this website.

Sonia Masih is a senior at Wooster High School and is interested in pursuing a career in the science field. She is currently working on a project to test the efficacy of organic herbicides on the control of weed growth.

Recent Lab Graduates

Post-doctoral Fellows and Visiting Scientiests

Dr. Kamal Krishna Pal came as Visiting Scholar under the Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India, Long Term Overseas Associateship programme in 2006. He hails from the National Research Centre for Groundnut, Junagadh, Gujarat. Dr. Pal is looking for novel antifungal genes of Bacillus subtilis involved in the biological control of plant pathogens.

Dr. Dorith Rotenberg worked as a post-doctoral researcher during 2006. Currently she is a research assistant professor at Kansas State University.  She received her Ph. D. from the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and after spending time as a post-doctoral research fellow in the Department of Soil Science at UW-Madison, she discovered her love for studying the link between soil organic matter (SOM) dynamics and microbial community structure and function related to crop health. At OSU, she investigated the effect of farming practices on the rhizosphere abundance of antibiotic-producing Pseudomonas populations in corn and soybean fields as a means to elucidating soil factors that limit and promote biological control functions in Ohio agricultural systems.

Graduate students

Raghavendra Joshi  M.Sc. 2005. Currently is working as a PhD student in molecular biology at the U. of Minnesota.  He hails from the south Indian city of Bangalore. Raghu obtained his Master’s in Biochemistry from UAS, Bangalore, India.  His broad interests are towards understanding molecular plant microbe interactions. His research focused on the  characterization of molecular markers unique to Bacillus subtilis with biocontrol capacities.

Laura Gutierrez Chapin M.Sc. 2004. Currently works as a research associate in the Dept. of Horticulture and Crop Science at the Ohio State U. She hails from upstate New York and completed a B.A. in Biology from Allegheny College in PA

Technicians and undergraduate assistants

Callie Merry is a student at Denison College where she is studying biology. During the summer of 2007 she worked on conducting a variety of in vitro inhibition assays and PCR-based characterization of 16S sequences from novel biocontrol strains.

Alejandra Sanchez hails from Columbia and is working part-time on various projects.

Kerry Melanovsky attends the College of Wooster.  She continued the work of Dr. Pal, creating and evaluating mutants of biocontrol genes in Bacillus subtils.

Dario Chavez was a research assistnat.  Currently he is pursuing a Ph.D. in Plant Breeding at U. of Florida.  He was born in Riobamba, Ecuador and studied n Honduras at Panamerican School of Agriculture Zamorano until 2005, in which year thru January to April I was making my short term scholar at University of Georgia in the Distance Diagnostic through Digital Imaging project.

Clara Zumpetta is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Plant Pathology at OSU under Dr. Coplin. She hails from Northeastern Ohio and graduated in 2005 from Mount Union College in Alliance, OH with a B.S. in Biology and a minor in Chemistry.  At the OARDC, her work centered on processing corn and soybean samples in order to culture biocontrol strains of Pseudomonas fluorescens and assaying the effects of a field’s slope on the frequency and genotypic diversity of native phlD⁺ Ps. fluorescens colonizing corn roots and rhizosphere.  She is currentlypursuing a Master's degree in the laboratory of Dr. Dave Coplin at The Ohio State University.

Amara Camp is originally from Rhode Island and graduated from Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA, with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a minor in Spanish.  She assisted with greenhouse assays, field sampling, data analysis, and general lab management, for the summers of 2004 and 2005. In 2006 she entered the graduate program in Plant Pathology at Cornell University..

Ethan Horst is a Wooster native and has been working at the OARDC every summer since his sophomore year in high school.  He attends Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia where he is majoring in Biology and will be a junior this fall.  Ethan’s varied tasks include taking field samples, processing said samples, computer and database work, and designing and maintaining this website.

Jacki Mesaros is originally from Southeastern Michigan.  She attends the University of Toledo and is majoring in Bioengineering.  Her summer internship involves optimizing the protocol used to isolate Bacillus, specifically B. subtilis and B. pumilis.  The main goal wasto compare the isolates of interest to other biocontrols through PCR Assays and DNA sequencing.