Dr. Courtney Leisner
FACULTY AFFILIATE | Global Change Center
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Google Scholar • Dept Page • Lab Site
cleisner@vt.edu
Dr. Courtney Leisner’s research investigates how climate change effects crop physiology and development and the subsequent effects on nutritional quality and yield. Her research integrates fundamental crop plant physiology with genomics and molecular biology at the whole-plant level to assess how plants develop innate resilience mechanisms that can be tapped for production of sustainable future food. Current research projects span many fruit and vegetable cropping systems, and use interdisciplinary approaches to understand the complex response of plants to climate change.
Dr. Leisner is an Assistant Professor in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences at Virginia Tech. She completed her Master’s degree at Washington State University and her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She then served as a NIH National Research Service Award Ruth L. Kirchstein Postdoctoral Fellow at Michigan State University before joining the faculty at Auburn University in the Department of Biological Sciences in 2018. In August of 2023 she moved her research program to Virginia Tech.
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