Erik W Vollbrecht

Erik W Vollbrecht is a Professor and Pioneer Chair in Molecular Biology of Maize at Iowa State University's Department of Genetics, Development, and Cell Biology. His research focuses on plant developmental mechanisms, particularly in maize, integrating genomics tools to study floral shoot branching and transposon biology. He leads the Vollbrecht Lab, which develops transposon-induced gene knockout lines and investigates gametophyte mechanisms.

Education: B.A. (1985) and Ph.D. (1997) in Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. Postdoctoral training at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (DOE-Energy Biosciences fellow).

Research Interests:

• Molecular mechanisms of plant development and evolution
• Maize inflorescence architecture regulation
• Functional genomics using Ac/Ds transposable elements
• Maize gametophyte developmental genetics

Labs/Teams: Vollbrecht Lab (ISU), collaborating on projects like the NSF-funded Maize Gametophyte initiative. Supervises graduate students (Colin Finnegan, Lander Geadelmann, Brian Zebosi) and hosts undergraduate researchers.