Problem Solver
Vincent Gutschick
Areas Vincent Gutschick is Knowledgeable in:
* Optimal crop (ideotype) design (trait selection and introgression) and management, esp. in areas of growth, water- and N-use efficiency, stress tolerance, and responses to extreme events. * Similarly, for non-crop systems (lightly-managed forests, wild land), the assessment of water use, stress levels, and responses to extreme events, for the estimation of water resources and fire risk. * For wild land to crops: estimation of biogeographic changes being driven by climate and CO2 change, using deeper knowledge of physiology and evolutionary biology. * Climate change (and direct effects of CO2 and any geoengineering) - amelioration (particularly by introduction of green technologies) and adaptation. * LIfe-cycle assessment of energy technologies for net energy yield (including all capital energy use) and climate/environmental impacts; this includes evaluation in the large of claims by proponents of new technologies
Techniques Vincent Gutschick Uses:
From my Ph. D. work in chemical physics, I have retained a command of many mathematical modeling tools. I typically begin a study with a process-bases model, whose predictions I take as hypotheses to test. Consequently, I have done lab, greenhouse, and field testing in diverse areas of crop and wild plant physiology and ecology. Because I have worked in diverse areas of biology, chemistry, and physics, I can apply many broad perspectives, which I then focus. My CV, which can be inspected on my Website, supports the breadth of my toolset, in that I have published in approximately 25 different journals in many different fields and I have been a referee for nearly 30 different journals in an equally diverse set of scientific fields.
Vincent Gutschick's Problem Solving Skills:
- Life-cycle energy technology assessment
- Photography in field and lab - macro to aerial (no photomicrography)
- Plant physiological ecology
- Plant physiology
- Crop water use and aspects of irrigation optimization
- Mathematical optimization modeling
- Remote sensing applications to water resources issues
- Physiological modeling
- Biofuels assessment (energy and environmental impacts)
- Chemical physics
- Electronics - design, construction, and operation of small sensor systems
- Web programming (moderate)
- Physical modeling of systems (resource fluxes in air and soil; plant physiological processes; energy technologies)
Vincent Gutschick's Problem Solving Experience:
- Predicting improved yield of soybeans with reduced chlorophyll content, based on coupled models of plant physiology, light interception, and environmental responses; validated by Peters et al. at the University of Illinois (8% gains); alas, farmers fail to accept light-colored crops
- Providing an evolutionary and ecological framework to understand the patterns of how plants acquire and use nitrogen as a nutrient; this is applicable to the design of crop ideotypes, including the recognition of important tradeoffs among traits that may be bred in
- Quantitative estimation of control of water use by plant physiological traits - to apply in crop optimization programs
- Early analyses of energy transfer among chlorophyll molecules in the photosynthetic apparatus of plants, using principles of quantum mechanics
- Establishing limits for the improvement of crop water-use efficiency by breeding for physiological traits
- Establishing a comprehensive new framework for assessing the effects of extreme events on biological systems, particularly plants. This includes initial estimates of (disturbing) diversity in individual-species responses and our inability to predict the responses a` priori by what are termed functional groups of plant species.
- Design of patented light sensors to measure light interception on moving plant leaves, for physiological and agronomic studies
- Improved remote-sensing estimation of water use by crops and wildland, including errro/sensitivity analyses
- Quantifying limits of adaptations to low-nutrient stresses in a paradigmatic plant species (sunflower, a ruderal)
- Providing quantitative physiological estimates of the effects of elevated CO2 on plant performance, including losses in protein content
- Mathematical formulation and programming of models for predicting (and analyzing) leaf water use in response to the environment, coupling advanced models of stomatal control, photosynthesis, energy balance, and gas transport
- Complete design, construction, and operation of: electronic sensors for field research on plant ecophysiology; extensive modification of portable photosynthesis system; a high-throughput hydroponic system for studies of plant responses to very low nutrient levels