Jeff Miller, an Idaho native with masters and doctor's degrees from Washington State University, was named University of Idaho potato disease researcher at the Aberdeen, ID, Research and Extension Center.
Miller will succeed the retired Jim Davis. He will join the UI faculty as an assistant professor of plant pathology shortly after Jan. 1.
In addition to conducting applied and fundamental research on production and storage diseases of potatoes, Miller will spend a fifth of his time developing and delivering technical information on potato diseases.
Miller is the son of southern Idaho ag consultant Terry Miller and is currently an assistant professor of plant pathology at the University of Minnesota. He holds a bachelor's degree in botany-biotechnology from Brigham Young University.
He wrote his dissertation on the population biology of the fungal agent that causes late blight in the Columbia Basin. As a post-doctoral fellow at UI's Idaho Falls Research and Extension Center, he initiated an ongoing project to evaluate and improve existing late-blight forecasting models for the Pacific Northwest.
He expects this research, which he continued while in Minnesota, to lead to improved timing of fungicide applications for late blight control.