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Courtney Leisner

Assistant Professor
Courtney Leisner
301 Latham Hall
Blacksburg, VA
cleisner@vt.edu

Overview

I have a two-way appointment in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences that entails 75% research, 25% teaching. The focus of my research program is to use genomics-enabled plant physiology to understand climate change impacts on plant production and nutritional quality. I currently teach courses within the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences covering topics such as genomics of crop breeding for abiotic stress, plant physiology and fundamentals of plant biology.

Expertise

  • Abiotic Stress
  • Plant Physiology
  • Plant Molecular Biology
  • Plant Genomics and Bioinformatics
  • Plant Specialized Metabolism

Education

  • Ph.D., Plant Biology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2014
  • M.Sc., Botany, Washington State University, 2009
  • B.Sc., Biology and Environmental Science, The College of William and Mary, 2007

How will we maintain an adequate and nutritious food supply under portending future climate change?

This is the central question driving my research program in plant-environment interactions. To begin answering this question it is essential to link complex physiological phenotypes associated with crop yield and nutritional losses with their underlying biochemical and genetic mechanisms. To this end, I use a systems biology approach combining fundamental crop plant physiology with genomics and molecular biology at the whole-plant level to assess how plants develop innate resilience mechanisms that can be tapped for production of sustainable future food. By employing computational and molecular approaches with knowledge of plant physiology, my research program works to understand how changes in plant development, gene expression and biochemistry lead to nutritional losses in plants due to climate change climate. By employing an interdisciplinary approach my research program can solve problems related to how climate change impacts on crop physiology and development ultimately lead to nutritional and yield losses. Outcomes from this approach have the potential to transform agriculture in the face of a changing climate.

  • SPES 5984: Plant Genomics and Stress
  • Hort/Biol 2304: Plant Biology

Assistant Professor | 2023-Present
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Assistant Professor | 2018-2023
Department of Biological Sciences
Auburn University

NIH Ruth L. Kirchstein National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellow | 2015-2018
Department of Plant Biology
Michigan State University

Postdoctoral Researcher | 2014-2015
Department of Plant Biology
Michigan State University

For a complete list of publications, see here.