James Schnable is the Nebraska Corn Checkoff Presidential Chair at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. The research group he leads focuses on the quantitative genetics and breeding of corn, sorghum, and other related crops. Using a combination of advanced genomic, phenomic and machine learning technologies his team is identifying specific genes in crops that improve both the agronomic properties and food quality/value of crop plants. In his nine years at the University, he has established three companies in the fields of bioinformatics, climate-resilient agriculture, and precision agronomy, raised over $7 million in funding from angel and venture investors, and secured more than $20M funding for his research program from a wide range of government agencies and organizations including the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foundation for Food and Agricultural research, for-profit companies and NGOs. Dr. Schnable recently returned to the University of Nebraska after a leave of absence to work at X, a division of Google that develops and implements “moonshot” technologies to make the world a radically better place.

He holds a BA in Biology from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Plant Biology from UC-Berkeley. He was NSF Plant Genome Fellowship supported postdoctoral scholar at the Danforth Center in St. Louis and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, China. He received the Marcus Rhoades early career award for maize genetics in 2018, the North American Plant Phenotyping Network Early Career award, and the American Society of Plant Biologists Early Career Award in 2019.

Graduate student mentorship through the following programs:

• Department of Agronomy & Horticulture Graduate Program
• Complex Biosystems PhD Program