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Karen Sanguinet has been hired as the Klingbeil Endowed Department Head of Agronomy, Horticulture and Plant Science and professor in the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences at South ��ֱ���� State University. 

“I’m pleased to welcome Dr. Sanguinet to SDSU,” said Joseph Cassady, the South ��ֱ���� Corn Endowed Dean of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences at SDSU. “She brings a wealth of teaching, competitive research and mentoring experience that will serve our students, faculty, staff and stakeholders well.” 

Sanguinet comes to SDSU from Washington State University, where she served as an associate professor of crop physiology with a focus on root development and stress tolerance using functional genetic and genomics approaches in a variety of crops. She also served as faculty ombuds and assistant director of the molecular plant sciences graduate program in the WSU Graduate School. She’s previously held research positions at the Plant Gene Expression Center, Albany, California; University of Lausanne, Switzerland; University of Massachusetts-Amherst; and Iwate University in Japan. 

Sanguinet succeeds former department head David Wright and is excited to be back in an area that grows corn, which was the focus of her Ph.D. research. 

“SDSU is really rooted in the land-grant mission and in education, which are two things I care deeply about,” she said. “This seemed like just the perfect fit in terms of the department, which will provide room for growth and the ability to develop and reconnect with teaching and the land-grant mission.” 

Sanguinet earned bachelor's degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in genetics and in horticulture with a specialization in vegetable crops and a doctoral degree from the University of California-Berkeley in plant biology. 

With extensive experience abroad and speaking multiple languages, she hopes to develop more education abroad opportunities for SDSU. She’s also excited to grow relationships with producers, stakeholders, commodity commissions and private industry in South ��ֱ���� and neighboring states. 

“I love research and science, and the path that I’ve been on has been amazing, because it’s taken me so many places and I’ve met so many wonderful people,” she said. “I’m really excited to have my next chapter at SDSU.”