Michael (Mike) Gore is a professor of molecular breeding and genetics for nutritional quality and Liberty Hyde Bailey professor at Cornell University, where he is a member of the faculty in the Plant Breeding and Genetics Section in the School of Integrative Plant Science. Gore co-leads the Phenomics component of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement.
He holds a BS and MS from Virginia Tech, and a PhD from Cornell University. Before joining the faculty at Cornell in 2013, he worked as a Research Geneticist with the USDA-ARS at the Arid-Land Agricultural Research Center in Maricopa, Arizona from 2009-13.
Overall, the Gore lab combines quantitative genetics, genomics, analytical chemistry and remote sensing to elucidate the genetic basis of complex trait variation in various crops, including maize, oat, cassava, cotton, sorghum, industrial rapeseed, and guayule. Gore’s expertise is in the field of quantitative genetics and genomics, especially the genetic dissection of metabolic seed traits related to nutritional quality. Gore also develops and applies field-based, high-throughput phenotyping tools for plant breeding and genetics research.
In addition to his course teaching responsibilities at Cornell, Gore teaches two short courses at the Tucson Plant Breeding Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and throughout the world, served on the editorial boards of Crop Science (2012-17), Theoretical and Applied Genetics (2012-19), MaizeGDB (2015), The Plant Phenome Journal (2017-present), and Plant Breeding and Biotechnology (2014-present), and served as the Chair for the Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee (SCC080)―the USDA-sponsored advisory group of representatives from land grant universities.
Gore’s career accomplishments in plant breeding and genetics earned him the National Association of Plant Breeders Early Career Scientist Award in 2012, the American Society of Plant Biologists Early Career Award in 2013, the Maize Genetics Executive Committee Early Career Excellence in Maize Genetics Award in 2016, and the Virginia Tech Distinguished Alumnus in Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences in 2017.
