Bio

Stephanie Slinski

Interim Executive Director Interim Executive Director Yuma Center of Excellence for Desert Agriculture

Stephanie Slinski has degrees in Plant and Soil Science, Microbiology and a PhD in Plant Pathology. She started her plant pathology career in a plant disease diagnostic clinic working with fungal, bacterial, viral, and nematode diseases of vegetable and ornamental crops at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She continued her studies in plant pathology at the University of California, Davis followed by postdoctoral training at the Forestry and Agriculture Biotechnology Institute at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. She then returned to working with the agriculture industry as a project manager at the Citrus Research and Development Foundation in Florida. She came to Yuma in 2018 as the Associate Director of Applied Research and Development. One focus has been building a program to address Fusarium wilt of lettuce and includes yearly field trials and building a collaboration network to expand active research on this disease. She is also involved in projects addressing other important diseases, soil health, Agtech, water conservation, food safety, and other agricultural production needs.