Diana Ruggiero

Diana Ruggiero is PhD student in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University. She is researching the genetics of plant development and is using both molecular and computational approaches. Her adviser is Dr. Samuel Leiboff.

Before starting graduate school, Diana worked for several years doing ecological restoration, landscaping, and trail work in the Pacific Northwest. She is an AmeriCorps alumna and has a B.A. in Computer Science from Bard College.

Ms. Ruggiero represented the ARCS Foundation as a supported graduate scholar of the Oregon Chapter.

You can contact her at either:

ruggiedi@oregonstate.edu
druggiero@protonmail.com

Education

Oregon State University, College of Agricultural Sciences | Corvallis, OR

Bard College | Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

Publications

O'Hara, K., Burke, K., Ruggiero, D., and Anderson, S. "Linking Language & Thinking with Code: Computing within a Writing-Intensive Introduction to the Liberal Arts." ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE). July 2017. [doi.org/10.1145/3059009.3059018]

Invited Talks

(Lightning Talk), "Understanding leaf vascular density through quantitative genetics and high-throughput phenotyping." 66th Annual Maize Genetics Meeting, Development Premeeting. Raleigh, NC. March 2024

(Lightning Talk), "Quantitative genetics and high-throughput phenotyping of maize leaf vascular traits." 65th Annual Maize Genetics Meeting, Development Premeeting. St. Louis, MO. March 2023

(Podcast Interview) Genome Insider S3 Episode 2: Better Crops With a Pointillist Approach to Plant Genomics. DOE Joint Genome Institute. August 2022

(Short Talk) "Combinatorial barcoding for single-nucleus sequencing of developing maize leaf primordia." Plant Biology 2022, American Society of Plant Biologists. Portland, OR. July 2022

(Lightning Talk), "Single-cell genomics and high-throughput phenotyping for determining the quantitative genetics of maize leaf vascular development." 64th Annual Maize Genetics Meeting. St. Louis, MO. March 2022

Fellowships

Awards

Teaching

Oregon State University, Graduate TA:
 BOT 101: Botany: A Human Concern - Introductory Botany for Non-Majors (In-Person)
 BI 204: Introductory Biology I (Virtual)
 BI 205: Introductory Biology II (Virtual)

Bard College, Undergraduate TA:
 CS 143: Object-Oriented Programming with Robots (In-Person)
 CS 117: Interactive Systems (In-Person)

Outreach and Leadership

Current Research Projects

My research concerns the genetics of the development of veins and vascular patterning in the leaves of Zea mays. Some of the approaches I am using include single-cell RNA sequencing of leaves and a GWAS (Genome-Wide Association Study) of vein phenotypes over a large panel of around 800 different maize lines. I am particularly interested in vascular traits which differ between C₃ and C₄ plants.

I am interested in using computational approaches within plant science; as such I am developing an automated phenotyping tool using neural nets to facilitate my GWAS data collection. I am also exploring computational models of genetic regulatory networks and plant morphogenesis.

More on all this coming soon!