Meet new grad student Zoe Gray

Zoe Gray headshot

Meet RegenPGC’s newest graduate stuent Zoe Gray. Zoe is a master’s student in soil science at the University of Missouri, where RegenPGC CoPd Morgan Davis serves as her advisor. Zoe previously obtained her bachelor’s in environmental science from the University of Missouri.

As an undergrad, Zoe joined the soil judging team, where I competed in numerous competitions that focused on soil chemistry, biology, morphology, physics, and genesis. During her time with the team, Zoe found a desire to learn more about soils and decided to pursue her master’s degree.

As a new member of the RegenPGC team (April 2026), Zoe’s research will focus on the hydraulic conductivity of soils within a perennial groundcover system compared to a system with no ground cover. She will be focusing on hydraulic conductivity as well as water retention curves.

Career Aspirations
After completing her Master’s, Zoe hopes to stay within the research realm and continue working in a lab space that strives to enhance agricultural methods with the integrity of the soil in mind.

Graduate Advisor
Dr. Morgan Davis (RegenPGC CoPd)

RegenPGC research team releases latest progress report

Great news! Our RegenPGC research team has just shared our latest progress report. This report, which highlights our research, education, and extension efforts from August to October 2025, is designed to be easy to follow.

This report keeps our agency funder, USDA-NIFA, in the loop, and it’s also a way for the public, who supports our work, to stay informed.

You can find the report on our website at https://www.regenpgc.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/2026-01-30-RegenPGC-YR-5-Q1-FINAL.pdf

Contact: Dr. Raj Raman, Iowa State University Dept. of Agriculture & BioSystems Engineering rajraman@iastate.edu

Meet teacher Elisa “Ellie” Soosloff

Ellie Soosloff 2025 RET

Meet high school math teacher Elisa “Ellie” Soosloff, a professional educator who loves a full workload!

Elisa “Ellie” Soosloff, Creston High School, Creston, Iowa

I am a high school math teacher in Creston, Iowa, entering my 5th year of teaching. I grew up in Elgin, Illinois, and moved to Iowa for college, where I attended Drake University, completing a BA in Mathematics and a Spanish Minor alongside my BSE in Secondary Education. This past summer, I also finished my MA in Mathematics through Texas A&M to begin offering Calc 1, College Algebra, and Statistics for community college credit at Creston High School. I also teach Geometry, Trigonometry, Pre-Calc, and Probability & Statistics. It’s a full load, but I love it!

I applied to the RET program because… I have a passion for continuing my learning and being able to show my students not only why the math works how it does, but how it can be applied. I always love telling my students about how math and STEM are constantly growing and changing, and what better way to do that than to go help grow and develop research myself.

My expectations of the RET program are… to develop my knowledge about how research is done this summer. I’m excited to gain experience and make connections with other teachers and researchers to learn everything that I can. I’m especially looking forward to potentially developing something I could take back to my own classroom.

How do you see this experience impacting your classroom? I would love to incorporate more cross-curricular and project-based learning into my classroom and begin to introduce the students to areas of STEM that they don’t get to explore as commonly at the high school level. I believe this experience will be a great way to collaborate with other STEM areas and begin developing those kinds of materials based on the research descriptions involving creating and implementing classroom activities.

RegenPGC Graduate Students selected for prestigious fellowship

Not one, but two! RegenPGC graduate students Oluwatuyi (Tuyi) Olowoyeye and Vipul Kumar have been awarded prestigious FFAR Fellowships. Since 2018, the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research (FFAR) has awarded three-year fellowships to PhD students studying food and agricultural sciences.

The FFAR fellowship provides training, professional development, and opportunities to engage with thought leaders in government and industry. You can learn more about the FFAR fellows program at https://foundationfar.org/what-we-do/research-priorities/scientific-workforce/ffar-fellows/.

Oluwatuyi (Tuyi) Olowoyeye is part of the 2023–2026 FFAR fellowship cohort. At Iowa State University, Tuyi is mentored by RegenPGC CoProject Director Dr. Amy Kaleita, and his Fellowship is sponsored by Iowa State University. His dissertation research “focuses on using computer models to quantify the benefits of generative agricultural practices.” You can learn more about Tuyi and his FFAR story here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/4d24147d86924b33a2ae17fd602d318d.

Vipul Kumar is a member of the 2024–2027 FFAR fellowship cohort as a plant breeder. His Iowa State University/RegenPGC mentor is Dr. Shui-zhang Fei. Iowa State University and Corteva Agrisciences sponsor Vipul’s fellowship. Vipul’s research focuses on Sandberg bluegrass (Poa secunda), a promising perennial groundcover candidate characterized by its summer dormancy, cool-season growth habit, and shallow root system. You can learn more about Vipul’s Fellowship at https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7f23a8cd28494b3eaafc8a4a9b25941e.

Research? Just never stop learning.

“Withut deviation progress is not possible.” This is probably the first time a USDA-NIFA report has inspiration in a quote attributed to Frank Zappa!

The quote is interesting, but we don’t totally agree with it in the context of our latest quarterly report (May 1 – July 31, 2024). We have never stopped learning about perennial groundcover since we started this project in 2021. Each research result teaches us something new, and we reassess what we previously believed in light of new information. At the same time, we never deviate from our goal of developing and increasing the reliability of perennial ground cover systems.

We measure our progress on our ability to make continuous course corrections. With that mindset, we think we are well on our way to demonstrating that perennial groundcover can be a useful approach to providing a range of farm operations with cover crops that require low labor inputs, provide significant ecosystem benefits, increase row crop resiliency, and have similar economic profiles as conventional row crop practices.