Congratulations to plant breeding PhD students Liza Van der Laan and Joscif Raigne, advised by Agronomy Professor Danny Singh. Van der Laan, who earned her PhD this spring, was selected for the 2025 Karas Award for Outstanding Dissertation at Iowa State University, one of the most prestigious graduate student awards. The award was established to recognize excellence in doctoral research at Iowa State.

According to Singh, Van der Laan has “done pioneering work on important traits in soybean using different 'omics methods in plant breeding research. Her work on improving heat stress tolerance in soybean is paving the way for the development of improved varieties.” She and the Danny Singh Lab had received research funding from the Iowa Soybean Association, the AI Institute for Resilient Agriculture at Iowa State and the Raymond F. Baker Center for Plant Breeding Plant Sciences Institute. She also was involved in the ISRC-funded project on the Effects of Increased CO₂ and Heat Stress on Soybean Performance. Van der Laan is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida.

Raigne was selected for the CSSA Mott Award. This award is provided to a meritorious graduate student in crop science. The scholarship is supported by gifts from the Gerald O. Mott family to the Agronomic Science Foundation and administered by the Crop Science Society of America.