Dr. Kaitlin (Katie) Gold is an Assistant Professor of Grape Pathology at Cornell University, where she leads the Grape Sensing, Pathology, and Extension Laboratory at Cornell AgriTech (GrapeSPEC). Gold leads the pest and disease risk mitigation arm of NASA Acres and is an internationally recognized expert in in situ and imaging spectroscopy (also known as “hyperspectral imaging”) of plant disease. GrapeSPEC studies the fundamental and applied science of plant disease sensing to improve early grape disease detection and management with sensors deployed at a range of spatial scales, from handheld to spaceborne. Gold completed her PhD in Plant Pathology and MS in Applied Statistics concurrently at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2019. In 2019 she was honored by the American Phytopathological Society with the Schroth Face of the Future Award for her groundbreaking dissertation research that pioneered the use of hyperspectral sensing for pre-symptomatic disease and differentiation. Prior to starting her tenure-track position at Cornell, she held a visiting faculty fellowship at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. Gold’s extension publications (“Grape Disease Control” guide, Appellation Cornell features, and industry publications) are distributed to grape growers worldwide and her talks have been attended both live and revisited over time as recordings by thousands of unique individuals. Gold manages the largest grape fungicide efficacy trials on the east coast spanning 4+ acres, 4 crop varieties, with 100+ treatments combinations annually. As part of VitisGen3, Gold co-leads the extension and disease control objectives. Her group will be designing precision disease control programs for VitisGen developed grape varieties as well as providing expertise on the use of novel imaging and sensing modalities to inform phenotyping.
