Rate My Professor John McKay

McKay's research centers on the ecology, evolution, and genetics of local adaptation in plants, particularly mechanisms of drought stress tolerance and phenotypic evolution in natural and cultivated populations. He leads the McKay Lab, which examines genotype-by-environment interactions, genomics of climate adaptation, and applications to crop breeding, conservation genomics, and bioenergy crops such as rice and maize. A key project is a $6.1 million ARPA-E Department of Energy initiative evaluating corn root traits for enhanced water and nutrient use efficiency, soil carbon uptake, and productivity. McKay was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2019 for distinguished contributions integrating ecophysiology, genetics, and genomics. He was named a Monfort Professor at CSU in 2012, a two-year honor recognizing his research, teaching, and service. He has taught graduate courses including Molecular and Genome Evolution, Evolutionary Ecology, and Plant Breeding for Drought Tolerance, and mentors undergraduates in research. His outreach earned the 2009 Community Science Outreach Award from Putnam Elementary School. Notable publications include "Exploiting Differential Gene Expression and Epistasis to Discover Candidate Genes for Drought-Associated QTLs in Arabidopsis thaliana" (The Plant Cell, 2015), "Genomics and the challenging translation into conservation practice" (Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2015), "Direct and indirect selection on flowering time, water-use efficiency (WUE, δ¹³C), and WUE plasticity to drought in Arabidopsis thaliana" (Ecology and Evolution, 2014), and "Ecological genetics of range size variation in Boechera spp. (Brassicaceae)" (Ecology and Evolution, 2015). He delivered featured talks at the 2011 Keystone Meeting on Plant Abiotic Stress Tolerance Mechanisms and the 2010 Ecological Genomics Symposium.