Biosketch
Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra is Professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis. Ross-Ibarra earned his B.A. in Botany from the University of California, Riverside in 1998 and his M.S. in Botany in 2000. He received his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Georgia in 2006, followed by postdoctoral work in evolutionary genetics at the University of California, Irvine. He joined the faculty at UC Davis in 2009, where his group has built maize into a powerful system for connecting fundamental evolutionary biology with crop diversity and adaptation. Since 2024, Ross-Ibarra has served as the Scientific Director of High-Performance Computing for UC Davis.
His honors include the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the DuPont Young Professor Award, the Maize Genetics Mid-Career Award for Research Excellence, and the 2024 NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences. He is an AAAS Fellow, and has served on the Genetics Society of America Board of Directors, the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution Executive Council, and the Maize Genetics Corporation Board of Directors.
Research Interests
Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra studies the evolutionary genomics of maize and its wild relatives as a model system to understand how plant genomes evolve and how crops originate, adapt, and diversify. His research combines population and quantitative genetics, archaeology, and computational and experimental biology to connect fundamental evolutionary processes with agriculturally important variation.
A central focus of his work is the domestication and diversification of maize. His group has shown how selection, demographic history, and gene flow from wild relatives shaped the maize genome as it spread from its center of origin in Mexico into diverse environments across the Americas.
Ross-Ibarra's group also investigates how the architecture of the genome itself evolves, from the dynamics of transposable elements that make up the bulk of the maize genome to large structural variants such as chromosomal inversions and their role in adaptation. These features shape recombination, diversity, and the raw material on which selection acts, linking genome structure to evolutionary outcomes.
His research further identifies naturally occurring genetic variation associated with environmental adaptation. By linking evolutionary history to contemporary crop performance, this work provides a framework for understanding how populations respond to environmental change and for harnessing natural diversity to improve agricultural resilience.
Membership Type
Member
Election Year
2026
Primary Section
Section 62: Plant, Soil, and Microbial Sciences
Secondary Section
Section 27: Evolutionary Biology