Fifty years of the Hayes Phillips Award

More than twenty past award recipients joined a two-day celebration of the Hayes Phillips Award, hosted by the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics (APG), this May. This year's program honored the 50 past awardees, the 2024 award recipient Hannah Stoll, and the recipients of APG’s 2024 Distinguished Alumni Awards, Roberto Tuberosa and Tabare Abadie. The program began with a tribute to Ron Phillips, who died last summer. Graduate students participated in "speed mentoring," brief conversations with the previous Hayes and Hayes Phillips Award recipients.

The Hayes Phillips Award began as the Hayes Award in 1974, and is now named after two distinguished faculty members in the department: H. K. Hayes, a faculty member from 1915 to 1952, and Ron Phillips, a faculty member from 1968 to 2010. Each year, the award is given to an APS graduate student who has excelled in academics, research, teaching, leadership, and service.

2024 Award Recipients

2024 Hayes Phillips Award

Hannah Stoll will complete her PhD in Applied Plant Sciences this year. She received her BS in Crop Sciences: Plant Biotechnology and Molecular Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her thesis work is focused on understanding the genetic architecture of key domestication traits in Kernza® and determining the genetic gain per breeding cycle. Stoll’s work at the U has included developing curricula centered around plant breeding and genetics. She has published classroom lessons that allow high school and undergraduate educators to teach basic biological concepts in the context of the development of new, sustainable cropping systems. Stoll—who developed a love for biology and genetics in high school—says she’s passionate about education and hopes to be educating in some capacity in her future career.

Departmental Distinguished Alumni: Academic

Roberto Tuberosa is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the University of Bologna. He received his B.S. from the University of Bologna and an MS (1985) and PhD (1997) from the University of Minnesota under the guidance of Ronald Phillips. For the past three decades, he has managed research projects to develop cereal crops more resilient to climate change. His major research interest is the genetic dissection of the adaptive response of cereals to drought. Tuberosa is currently chair of the Focus Group on Cereals of the AgriFood Cluster of the Regione Emilia-Romagna, Italy, a fellow of the Crop Science Society of America, and represents Europe on the Board of the International Crop Science Society.

Departmental Distinguished Alumni: Industry

Tabare Abadie is a Distinguished Research Laureate at Corteva Agriscience. Abadie received his BS in Agronomy at the Universidad de la Republica, Uruguay (1982), and his M.S. (1992) and Ph.D. (1994) at the University of Minnesota. Over a 40-year career, Abadie’s extensive expertise in crop science includes plant breeding and quantitative genetics as well as technological change in large organizations, career development, education, and mentoring. Abadie is the developer and co-coordinator of the Plant Sciences Symposia Series, an international network of student-driven organized and hosted scientific events. The series began with the first Plant Sciences Symposium held at the University of Minnesota in 2008.

Hayes and Hayes Phillips Awardees (1974 to 2024)

Names in bold attended the May 2024 event.

• 1974 William E. Kuhn
• 1975 Sheldon E. Blank
• 1976 Donn Cummings
• 1977 Steve R. Simmons
• 1978 Donald R. Viands
• 1979 Thomas J. McCoy
• 1980 James E. Miller
• 1981 Charlotte V. Eberlein
• 1982 Steve A. Thompson
• 1983 Josephine Heindl Coterman
• 1984 Oran B. Hesterman
• 1985 Debra Metzger Lee
• 1986 Patrick M. Hayes
• 1987 Virginia M. Peschke
• 1988 Beth M. Nelson (Schreiber)
• 1989 Peggy Egli
• 1990 Lori Marshall
• 1991 Brent W. Delzer
• 1992 Shawn M. Kaeppler
• 1993 Todd L. Krone
• 1994 Sandra C. Milach
• 1995 Philip M. Schwab
• 1996 Blair Waldron
• 1997 Jonathan Shaver
• 1998 Michael Olsen
• 1999 Joann Mudge
• 2000 Cristine Handel
• 2001 Lee DeHaan
• 2002 Juan Diaz
• 2003 Jianming Yu
• 2004 Lynn Litterer
• 2005 Martin Arbelbide
• 2006 Jennifer Jacobs
• 2007 Xiuling Zhang
• 2008 Haiyan Jia
• 2009 Robenson Lorenzana
• 2010 Toi J. Tsilo
• 2011 Jon Massman
• 2012 Emily Combs
• 2013 Michael Kantar
• 2014 Ana Poets (Gonzales)
• 2015 James Eckberg
• 2016 Prabin Bajgain
• 2017 Jared Goplen
• 2018 Jeffrey Neyhart
• 2019 Kayla Altendorf
• 2020 Austen Dobbels
• 2021 John Hill Price
• 2022 Rafael Della Coletta
• 2023 Michael Burns
• 2024 Hannah Stoll