Kendra joined AbacusBio in 2021 and is based at our fourth office, in North America, where she will be working alongside John Crowley.

At AbacusBio, Kendra brings to us her pragmatic and down-to-earth approach to projects that she learnt working on her family farm.  She is fascinated with improving processes and utilizing the tools at hand to help clients build world-class breeding programmes.

Kendra has more than 20 years of experience working in plant breeding and genetics across a wide array of crops. After spending several years as a research assistant in the industry, she earned her PhD in plant breeding from Iowa State University.

Kendra now specializes in the applications of computational biology and predictive analytics to breeding.

Kendra’s career highlights include:

• Partnering with breeding teams to incorporate genomics, computational biology, predictive analytics, and optimization into their programmes
• Building web apps to enable plant breeders to utilize advanced analytics methods without programming
• Working with teams in agribusinesses to launch breeding programmes targeted towards their specific markets

Her focus within AbacusBio is:

• Developing and implementing genomics and analytics solutions for breeding teams
• Applying computational biology and quantitative genetics tools to complex breeding problems and new cropping systems
• Working with small and medium-sized agribusinesses to build strategies based on latest data science