Principal Investigators
Dr. Steve Lommel, Interim Associate Dean
Lommel, a plant pathologist, has served as a faculty member at N.C. State since 1988. From 1992 to 2001 he served as an assistant director of North Carolina Agricultural Research Service (NCARS). He also has served as the university's assistant vice chancellor for research and graduate programs since 2001, a role he will continue, along with being the N.C. State/College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) representative to the North Carolina Research Campus.
Lommel's research focuses on how plant viruses regulate gene expression and move throughout a plant, causing a systemic infection. The goal of this work is to understand the process of viral systemic infection in sufficient detail to design control strategies that prevent the establishment and spread of a viral infection.
In 1998, Lommel and a colleague were the first to show that RNA can control gene expression, a function formerly attributed only to DNA. This discovery not only established an entirely new mechanism for regulating genetic expression but also provided supporting evidence for the popular hypothesis that RNAs were the first molecules capable of independent replication and enzymatic activity in the "primordial soup of life."
Lommel received his bachelor's degree in biology from the University of San Francisco, and his master's and doctoral degrees in plant pathology from the University of California at Berkeley.
Dr. Sylvia Blankenship, Interim Director
Blankenship joined the N.C. State faculty in September 1983 in horticultural science. She is a post-harvest physiologist with an emphasis in ethylene biology in fruits, vegetables and flowers. Blankenship served as assistant department head of Horticultural Science from 1999 to May 2003 and as interim department head of Horticultural Science from May 2003 to October 2003. She also served as interim associate dean for administration for the College, beginning November 2003, and she was promoted to associate dean for administration in February 2005.
COOPERATIVE EXTENSION at the NCRC:
Dr. Blake Brown, Hugh C. Kiger Professor
Specialty: Extension and research responsibilities for value-added and alternative agriculture and policy.
Blake Brown is the Hugh C. Kiger Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University. Dr. Brown joined the faculty in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics in 1991. He has spent much of his career as a policy analyst working on farm policy, particularly tobacco policy and the tobacco buyout. He has worked extensively with legislators and policy makers, including the Senate and House Agricultural Committees, in the area of tobacco policy. His economic analyses of tobacco policies at the farm level are published widely in both the popular and academic press.