About

As Associate Dean for Research and Discovery, Dr. Carolyn Lawrence-Dill provides support and oversight for research activities carried out in Iowa State University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). She also serves as the associate director of the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, where research is focused on improving understanding and use of agriculture, natural resources, and the life sciences toward improving global food security, protecting the planet’s resources and agricultural capacity, and navigating a broad array of social challenges to the benefit of Iowa, the nation, and the world.

Lawrence-Dill is a native of Texas and received her bachelor’s degree from Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. She earned her master’s degree at Texas Tech University studying cotton physiology, and her doctoral degree from the University of Georgia investigating how maize chromosomes segregate during cell division. After a postdoctoral position in bioinformatics at ISU, she worked for USDA-ARS, serving as a research geneticist and lead scientist for the Maize Genetics and Genomics Database. In 2014, she joined the faculty at ISU in two departments – Agronomy and Genetics, Development and Cell Biology. Lawrence-Dill served as the elected chair of the Interdepartmental Bioinformatics and Computational Biology graduate program at ISU and co-founded a novel graduate degree specialization in Predictive Plant Phenomics that spans six majors. Her research focuses on team science approaches to developing frameworks for computing on gene function and phenotype for crops.

Lawrence-Dill was an elected member and 2015 chair of the Maize Genetics Executive Committee, a founding member and 2019 chair of the North American Plant Phenotyping Network board of directors, and an elected member of the DivSeek International board of directors. She currently serves on numerous boards and advisory panels including the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, the North Central Regional Aquaculture Center, the National Plant Germplasm Coordinating Committee, and the Policy Committee for the American Society of Plant Biologists.

Publications – Publications list at Google Scholar