Past Members

Yusuf Kurt

Postdoctoral Scientist

I am from Turkey. I worked on different ongoing projects in Norway, Spain and Turkey. My research is mainly focused on population genetics of forest trees, especially Mediterranean species. I am awarded a post-doc fellowship in 2013 by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) to work one year at the North Carolina State University (NCSU). The post-doc fellowship research is about single nucleotide polymorphic (SNP) genotyping of open-pollinated Fraser fir families to establish full pedigrees which is known “breeding without breeding” in the literature.

I now work as an assistant professor in the Molecular Biology and Genetics Department of Harran University.

Laura Townsen

Masters Graduate Research Assistant

I am a graduate student at NC State working on my Masters degree in Forestry focusing on forest genetics. My research is part of the PINEMAP collaborative, and has the main goal of finding genetic variation in loblolly pine for adaptability to the current changing climatic variables. I will be developing cost effective DNA extraction methods and employing GBS to perform my research.

Ethan Bucholz

Masters Graduate Research Assistant

I am a Masters student in the Department of Forestry and I am looking for potential chemical differences between susceptible and resistant species of fir to the balsam woolly adelgid (BWA).