By Scout Nelson
South Dakota State University (SDSU) has announced the hiring of Karen Sanguinet as the Klingbeil Endowed Department Head of Agronomy, Horticulture, and Plant Science. She also serves as a professor in the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences.
Sanguinet comes to SDSU with extensive experience in teaching, mentoring, and competitive research. She previously worked at Washington State University as an associate professor of crop physiology.
Her research there focused on root development and stress tolerance, using genetics and genomics to study a variety of crops. She also held leadership roles, including faculty ombuds and assistant director of the molecular plant sciences graduate program.
Her career includes research positions in several prestigious institutions, such as the Plant Gene Expression Center in California, the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Iwate University in Japan.
Sanguinet replaces former department head David Wright. She says she is excited to return to an area where corn, the focus of her doctoral research at the University of California-Berkeley, is widely grown.
She also earned two bachelor’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in genetics and horticulture.
Passionate about education and the land-grant mission, she sees SDSU as the perfect fit to grow her career. She hopes to expand education abroad opportunities for students, strengthen partnerships with producers, stakeholders, and commodity groups, and foster closer ties with private industry.
Sanguinet also looks forward to building on her love for research and science, which has taken her around the world and connected her with many people.
She believes her role at SDSU will allow her to combine teaching, research, and leadership while helping students and the agricultural community thrive.
Photo Credit: south-dakota-state-university
Categories: South Dakota, Education