Crop Modeling · Plant Breeding · Data Science

Tess Kern

I study crops in the field and in the data — phenotyping, breeding trials, and the models that help make sense of them. Now a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, working on crop modeling and genomic prediction.

Champaign-Urbana, IL tessk2@illinois.edu · Kerntess@gmail.com B.S. Agronomy, Iowa State '23

Seed — Before the First Leaf

About

I am a Ph.D. graduate student at The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I work in a quantitative genetics lab studying crop modeling and genomic prediction in perennial sorghum and other crops, and take classes.

I am interested in answering questions related to stochastic modeling, and unraveling complex genomes to better understand agronomic traits.

I aim to assist breeding programs with the use of large genomic datasets.

VE — Emergence

Education

Where the roots went down.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Champaign-Urbana, IL
M.S. / Ph.D. · Aug 2026–present
  • Crop Sciences — Quantitative Genetics
  • Crop modeling and genomic prediction in perennial sorghum and other crops

Iowa State University

Ames, IA
3.5 GPA · Graduated Dec 2023
  • B.S. in Agronomy, minor in Data Science & Analytics

American Farm School, Perrotis College

Thessaloniki, Greece
4.0 GPA · Study Abroad, Spring 2022
  • Olive Production Systems
  • Viticulture
  • Weed Science
  • Sustainable Ag Management

V6 · R1 — Growth & Flowering

Research Experience

Seven field seasons, five labs, one running question: how do we breed better plants faster.

Research Intern

Ané Lab, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Madison, WI · Oct 2025–Aug 2026

  • Managed a team of 15 undergraduates through in-field phenotyping of corn aerial roots.
  • Wrote a literature review on aerial root development and the key genes driving initiation and growth.

REU Student

Arti Singh Lab, Iowa State University

Ames, IA · Jan–May & Sep–Dec 2023

  • Collected and organized ground-truth data for a supervised learning project characterizing mungbean pod length and count; supervised prior image annotations for the model.
  • Cut sample time from 15 minutes to 8 by splitting and overlapping tasks — reshaping the project timeline.

RAIN REU Visiting Scholar

Ciampitti Lab, Kansas State University

Manhattan, KS · May–Aug 2023

  • Wrangled data and built statistical programming skills for an end-of-summer poster presentation.
  • Compiled 20 years of Corn Belt yield data from yearly reports; analyzed corn vs. soybean yield trends in R.
  • 1st, Herbicide ID & 1st, Undergrad Team — Western Weed Science Society, National Weed Science Society meet, Union City, TN — practicing on-farm problem solving along the way.

Cropping Systems Intern

Corteva Agriscience

York, NE · May–Dec 2022

  • Oversaw 5 fields (3–10 acres each) across two states — sampling, notes, and action plans built with growers and station leads — leading teams collecting soil and plant data through 680 plots.
  • Organized 1,470 rye breeding accessions across two locations; managed all breeder communication.
  • Collaborated on a soybean single-seed heritability study.
  • Coordinated a farmer field day showcasing the perennial ground cover project.

Integrated Field Sciences Intern

Corteva Agriscience

Johnston, IA · May–Dec 2021

  • Investigated resistant alleles in insects for insect-resistant assays; prepped trays and dissected plants.
  • Harvested and processed hundreds of soybean plots; ran NIR trait analysis; operated an Almaco Harvest Pro/HP5 single-row plot harvester.
  • Characterized thousands of wheat samples for QTL and trait studies — prepping spikes for anther analysis and pollen counting toward hybrid wheat. Operated lab equipment including a microscope and an Elzone II particle counter.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Archontoulis Lab, Iowa State University

Ames, IA · Aug 2020–May 2021

  • Took nine-foot soil cores and subsampled for microbial analysis in support of FACTS.
  • Coordinated drying and C:N sample prep for corn and soybean tissue; weighed, shelled, and counted hundreds of corn samples across environments and management practices.

Summer Research Assistant

Corteva Agriscience

Johnston, IA · May–Aug 2020

  • Washed thousands of corn roots to evaluate insect trait efficacy in the research pipeline.
  • Inoculated and identified corn and soybean diseases — gray leaf spot, northern leaf blight, anthracnose, white mold — in large field trials.

R6 — Physiological Maturity

Projects

Grain fill complete — where the coursework turned into results.

Agronomy 525 · Special Project

Simulating Yields in Naper, NE

  • Ran a sensitivity analysis showing fertilizer variability drives most end-of-season yield variability.
  • Learned the APSIMX package in R and applied it across randomized simulation scenarios.
Data Science 301 · Senior Project

How to Win in Baseball

  • Three-person team studying which game-day variables predict a winning outcome.
  • Rebuilt Billy Beane and Peter Brand's 'Moneyball' approach on the Oakland A's dataset — 86% accuracy predicting MLB playoff chances with a random forest model in Python.

Next Planting

Let's grow something

I'm a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, working on crop modeling and genomic prediction — always glad to talk about perennial sorghum, stochastic modeling, or a genome that needs unraveling.

tessk2@illinois.edu
  • Also at Kerntess@gmail.com
  • Based in Champaign-Urbana, IL
  • Quantitative genetics lab — crop modeling & genomic prediction
  • Outside the field: traveling to new cultures, kayaking and biking with family, watching movies, and learning and performing hip-hop dances