Team Leader
Laura Cammarisano
Lead Principal Investigator - Assistant Professor and Assistant Agronomist at the Agricultural Experimental Station
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Dr. Cammarisano joined the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis in 2024. Her research focuses on understanding plant physiological responses to the environment to improve growth, quality, and resilience, with an emphasis on optimizing cultivation in protected environments such as nurseries, greenhouses, and indoor farms.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Calabria, Italy, and received her PhD in Plant Sciences from Aberystwyth University, United Kingdom, with a thesis on the optimization of crop yield and quality using artificial light. Dr. Cammarisano conducted postdoctoral research at the Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops in Germany, focusing on non-invasive monitoring of plant responses to abiotic stress in greenhouse and indoor farming systems.
Graduate Students
Nazmin Akter
Ph.D Student in Horticulture and Agronomy
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Nazmin Akter is a Ph.D student in Plant Science at the University of California, Davis. She completed her Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Agriculture (Honors) and her first Master of Science (MSc) in Horticulture at Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology University (HSTU) in Bangladesh, where she also served as an Assistant Professor. Nazmin pursued her second Master of Science (MSc) in Plant Sciences, specializing in Greenhouse Horticulture, at Wageningen University and Research (WUR) in the Netherlands. At WUR, her thesis focused on the effects of far-red light on sweet pepper production in a greenhouse, and her internship investigated the growth responses of cilantro under different light spectral ratios in a vertical farm system.
Her doctoral research at UC Davis, titled “Precision Hardening of Tomato Transplants in Controlled Environments: Enhancing Resilience through Chilling, Light, and Drought Manipulation,” aims to advance the development of resilient seedlings through targeted environmental regulation. By integrating plant physiology, controlled environment systems, and innovative stress-hardening approaches, her work contributes to improving the sustainability and efficiency of protected horticulture.
Kyle Chua
Ph.D Student in Horticulture and Agronomy
Kyle Chua is a Ph.D student working with the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis. He completed his bachelor of science in general biology at the University of California Santa Barbara, but was also trained as an evolutionary and restoration ecologist who worked to protect native California plants and biodiversity in chaparral and wetland ecosystems.
Kyle’s doctoral research at UC Davis focuses on how salinity, primarily from sodium chloride, affects plant growth in both soil and soilless systems within protected and controlled environments. His current work examines how lettuce, a widely cultivated hydroponic crop, responds to varying nutrient and sodium chloride concentrations under different levels of above-canopy airflow.
Zachary Gordon
Masters Student in Horticulture and Agronomy
Undergraduates
Jianxiong Sun
Jianxiong is completing his B.S in Agricultural Environmental Technology (AET) with a specific emphasis in CEA. Currently, he is involved in research studying stress physiology in tomato and lettuce and assisting with plant morphology data collection.
Past Students
Hamayun Shabir - Masters; Visiting Scholar from University of Bologna, Italy.