Recent News​
  • February 2018: Allison visited New York University - Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates to talk about grapes  in the Genomics VIII symposium. Read more about it on the lab blog! nyu-abu-dhabi-genomics-symposium.html
  • January 2018: A new Vitis phylogenomics manuscript, a collaborative project with Jason Londo and many others, has been accepted for publication at the American Journal of Botany.
  • December 2017: Brigette Williams successfully passed her qualifying exams! Congratulations, Brigette!
  • September 2017: The website for the NSF PGRP grapevine grafting project is live! www.vitisunderground.org. Thanks Emma and project team members!
  • August 2017: Welcome new lab PhD students Zach Harris and Joel Swift!
  • August 2017: The Land Institute Crop Diversity workshop (Salina KS) was awesome! Allison and Sterling attended. 
  • August 2017: The Year 1 project meeting for the NSF PGRP project was held in Davis, CA. Allison, Laura, Zach, and Joel attended. 
  • July 2017: Allison and Laura gave talks at the International Botanical Congress in Shenzhen, China. 
  • July 2017:  During renovations at SLU the lab will be based at the Danforth Plant Science Center. Our move began in early July!
  • July 2017: Research Assistant Emma Frawley joined the lab - welcome Emma!
  • July 2017: Thank you to the Missouri Grape and Wine Institute for funding our work in the Mount Vernon experimental vineyard! Congratulations to Brigette on a successful proposal!
  • June 2017: Allison, Laura, Alex, Joel, Sterling, and Emma attended the Botanical Society of America meeting in Fort Worth, TX. Check out our photos on the lab blog. 
  • May 2017: Claudia gave a presentation at the Eucarpia Crop Wild Relatives meeting in Montpellier France. Read more about it on the lab blog!
  • May 2017: Laura Klein graduated with her PhD in Biology from SLU! Laura will join the lab as a postdoc in June. 
  • May 2017: PhD student Brigette Williams was awarded the Stan Hudson Memorial Fund Student Research Award from the Missouri Native Plants Society. Congratulations Brigette!
  • April 2017: Lab undergrads Brooke Micke and Christian Kingeter presenter their work at the Sigma Xi Research Symposium. Great job Brooke and Christian! Photos here. 
  • April 2017: Laura Klein successfully defended her PhD dissertation! Congratulations Dr. Klein! 
  • April 2017: PhD Student Brigette Williams, co-advised by Christy Edwards at the Missouri Botanical Garden, was awarded an Arkansas Native Plant Society Delzie Demaree Research Grant. Congratulations Brigette!
  • April 2017: Allison gave a talk at Middle Tennessee State University. Thanks Ashley Morris for a great visit! Photos. 
  • March 2017: Allison participated in the 2017 University of Minnesota Plant Breeding Symposium. Thank you to the organizers and hosts for a great trip to the U!
  • March 2017: Congratulations to Alex Linan, recipient of the Garden Club of America Research Award to support his work in Diospyros. 
  • February 2017: Claudia and Sterling showcased the Perennial Agriculture Project Global Inventory at the Missouri Botanical Garden's research open house!. 
  • February 2017: Congratulations Laura Klein - first chapter of the dissertation has been published! Check it out here  
  • January 2017: We co-organized the Domestication Genomics Workshop at the International Plant and Animal Genome meeting and gave talks in the grafting genomics and perennial grasses workshops. 

Old news
  • December 2016: The Global Inventory Project team had our first annual meeting and it was awesome!! Miller Lab researchers (Allison, Claudia, Sterling), Missouri Botanical Garden team members, and The Land Institute scientists had a terrific and productive meeting at The Perennial Agriculture Project field site in Lawrence Kansas. Pictures are available on the lab photos page. Thanks to all of the participants!
  • November 2016: Research Viticulturist from E. & J. Gallo Winery Peter Cousins gave a presentation about internship opportunities for SLU students in the grape and wine industry. Read more about it on the lab blog! 
  • October 2016: Allison participated in the National Science Foundation-supported Plant Science Research Network workshop in Washington DC.  The goal of this workshop was to discuss the future of cyberinfrastructure and training in plant science. 
  • October 2016: Claudia Ciotir contributed a presentation "The Global Inventory Project: Building a botanical foundation for perennial polycultures" to a standing-room only crowd at the BiodiverseCity Speaker Series Wild Ideas Worth Sharing. 
  • October 2016: Alex Linan has advanced to candidacy! His dissertation research is focused on the diversification of the ebony and persimmon genus (Diospyros) in Madagascar and the Mascarenes.  Alex is co-advised by Christy Edwards, Conservation Geneticist at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Congratulations, Alex!
  • September 2016: Laura Klein submitted the first chapter of her dissertation "Digital morphometrics of two North American grapevines: assessing leaf variation within and among individuals, and among species (Vitaceae)" for review ! Congratulations, Laura! 
  • September 2016: Allison, Claudia, Sterling, and Sam traveled to The Land Institute in Salina, KS for The Prairie Festival. It was awesome! Read more about it on the lab blog here. 
  • August 2016: Thank you to the NSF Plant Genome Research Program for funding for our project entitled "Adapting perennial crops for climate change: Graft transmissible effects of rootstocks on grapevine shoots" - we are thrilled!! Read the project abstract here or on the NSF website here. 
  • August 2016: Allison and Claudia traveled to the Eucarpia meetings in Zurich - a meeting of European plant breeders and germplasm conservation groups.  Read more about it on the lab blog here!
  • August 2016: Lab alum Chrissy McAllister's work using SNP data to investigate multiple origins of higher order polyploids in Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) is out in the American Journal of Botany's special issue on polyploidy! 
  • August 2016: The Land Institute is looking for Silphium seeds! Please check out this site and help if you can! http://integrifolium.tumblr.com/germplasm
  • July 2016: Recent lab graduate Steven Callen has accepted a postdoc position in Malia Gehan's lab at the Danforth Plant Science Center.  Congratulations Steven!
  • June 2016: Lab alum Chrissy's population genomic analysis of the geographic origins of 9x big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) has been accepted for publication in the American Journal of Botany! Congratulations Chrissy! Now online! 
  • May 2016: Steven Callen successfully defended his dissertation "Climatic niche, breeding system, and fine-scale population genetic structure of native and invasive kudzu (Pueraria montana) populations" and passed with distinction. Congratulations, Dr. Callen! Click here to download the flyer.  ​
  • April 2016: Our rootstock review is on the cover of the May 2016 issue of Trends in Plant Science!  
  • April 2016: Allison gave a talk on grapevine rootstocks at the Danforth Center symposium celebrating the opening of their new wing "New Space to Speed the Pace: Advances in Plant Science by the Danforth Center and Partner Institutions." 
  • April 2016: Allison gave a departmental seminar at Miami University in Oxford, OH.  Thanks to the Botany group there for hosting such a great visit! 
  • April 2016: Thank you to the National Geographic Society for funding our exploration of natural population of native North American grapevines!
  • March 2016: Lab alum Chelsea Pretz was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Congratulations, Chelsea! 
  • March 2016: Congratulations to lab undergraduate Brook Micke - Brooke is headed to Costa Rica for a summer REU program summer with the Organization for Tropical Studies. 
  • February 2016: Our review on rootstock diversity and domestication is on-line at Trends in Plant Science
  • January 2016: Allison and Briana Gross (Univ. Minnesota-Duluth) co-organized the fourth annual Domestication Genomics workshop at the International Plant and Animal Genome meeting in San Diego January 10, 2016. Thanks to all of our outstanding speakers!
  • December 2015: The Botanical Society of America partnered with Saint Louis University in the Fall 2015 semester to offer student internships in plant science outreach and education.  Read more about it on the lab blog! 
  • November 2015: Our collaborative project on grapevine leaf shape led by Dan Chitwood (Danforth Plant Science Center) with Jason Londo (USDA-ARS Geneva) was published in New Phytologist!
  • October 2015: Videos from the NIMBioS workshop Laura attended are available on youtube! Check them out.
  • October 2015: The manuscript on rootstock biology Allison and Laura have been working on with collaborators from Florida International University, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and the USDA-ARS grape genetics research unit has been accepted as a feature review in Trends in Plant Science!
  • October 2015: Steven Callen is on the Defense of Plants podcast talking about kudzu - check it out!
  • October 2015: We are recruiting a PhD student for an endowed doctoral fellowship in plant conservation genetics/genomics, a joint position between the Missouri Botanical Garden Conservation Genetics Lab and Saint Louis University. See the SLU press release here. 
  • September 2015: Laura gave a talk about grapevine leaf morphometrics and Alex presented a poster at the St. Louis Evolution, Ecology, and Conservation (SLEEC) retreat. Allison gave a talk at The Land Institute's Prairie Festival - read more about it on the lab blog!
  • September 2015: Thank you to the Missouri Grape and Wine Board for funding our ongoing work in the Mount Vernon, MO experimental rootstock vineyard!
  • August 2015:  The lab is recruiting a post-doc to work on the global inventory project in collaboration with the Missouri Botanical Garden and The Land Institute.  Check out the job ad here!
  • July 2015: Allison, Laura, and Sterling attended the Botany 2015 meetings in Edmonton, Alberta.  Read more about it on the lab blog!
  • July 2015:  Laura was invited to participate in the Investigative Workshop - Morphological Plant Models held at NIMBioS in Knoxville, TN in September. Congratulations Laura!
  • June 2015: Steven's research on niches of invasive and native kudzu (recently published in Diversity and Distributions) was featured in the SLUNewslink. 
  • May 2015: Congratulations to graduating SLU students and Miller Lab researchers Madeleine Caito, Matthew Greg, and Regan O'Hanlon! 
  • May 2015:  Laura Klein and Mary Merello (Missouri Botanical Garden) are on the hunt for wild grapes in Texas!  We're keeping up with all their adventures on the lab blog.  
  • April 2015: Congratulations to graduate student Alex Linan who is the recipient of a Graduate Student Research Award from the American Society of Plant Taxonomists!  Alex is jointly advised by Allison and Christy Edwards, Conservation Geneticist at the Missouri Botanical Garden. 
  • April 2015: Preprint posted detailing some of our collaborative work on grapevine leaves with Dan Chitwood (Danforth Plant Science Center)!Chitwood DH, Klein LL, Miller AJ, and Londo JP. Leaves as composites of latent developmental and evolutionary shapes.  Thank you to Saint Louis Undergraduates Steve Chacko, Matthew Greg, Cassandra Kitchen, and Regan O'Hanlon for your outstanding contributions to this work!  
  • April 2015: Thank you to the Saint Louis University Presidential Research Fund for supporting our project entitled "Diversity and diversification in North American grapevines (V. riparia and V. rupestris)." We are grateful for this award!!  The proposed work will support part of Laura Klein's dissertation investigating the impacts of interspecific hybridization on leaf morphology and population genetic structure in North American grapevines.    
  • March 2015:  Allison gave a talk in the Washington University Ecology, Evolution, and Population Biology seminar series.  
  • March 2015:  SLU undergraduates Regan and Maddie presented their research, conducted under the direction of PhD Candidate Laura Klein and in collaboration with Dan Chitwood (Danforth Plant Science Center) at the SLU Undergraduate Research Symposium.  Great job everyone!
  • March 2015:  Thank you to the Perennial Agriculture Project in conjunction with the Malone Family Land Preservation Foundation andThe Land Institute for recommending funding for our project entitled "Global inventory and systematic evaluation of perennial grain, legume, and oilseed species for pre-breeding and domestication."  
  • March 2015: Thank you to the Saint Louis University Center for Sustainability Sustainability Research Fund for funding our project entitled "Towards a more sustainable agricultural system: global inventory and systematic evaluation of perennial grain, legume, and oilseed species for pre-breeding and domestication."  
  • March 2015:  Congratulations to lab alum Chrissy McAllister - second chapter of the dissertation submitted! 
  • March 2015: Congratulations to Steven Callen - "Signatures of niche conservatism and niche shift in the North American kudzu (Pueraria montana) invasion" accepted for publication in Diversity and Distributions!
  • February 2015: Allison gave a talk in the University of Illinois Plant Molecular and Physiological Biology seminar series. Thanks to the Departments of Crop Science and Plant Biology for a terrific visit!
  • January 2015: Plant and Animal Genome (PAG) Meeting in San Diego California!  The lab co-organized the Domestication Genomics Workshop and participated in the Grape Genome Initiative Workshop.