Rate My Professor Samuel Leiboff

Samuel Leiboff is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology within Oregon State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences, a position he has held since 2020. He leads the Leiboff Lab, which utilizes quantitative techniques including molecular genetics, genomics, computational biology, next-generation sequencing, long-read Oxford Nanopore, chromatin structural sequencing, and image-based measurements with mathematical modeling to understand plant development. The lab works with mutant plant varieties of maize and sorghum to identify genes necessary for normal, healthy corn plants, investigating developmental programs from individual cell activity to groups of related species, with a focus on leaf and flower assembly, shape dynamics, and molecular activity. Leiboff received his BSc in Environmental Sciences, emphasis Biological Sciences, from the University of California, Berkeley in 2010, and PhD in Plant Biology from Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Science in 2017 (Morphological diversity and quantitative genetics of the maize shoot apical meristem; advisor: Michael J. Scanlon). Previously, from 2017 to 2020, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at UC Berkeley, supervised by Prof. Sarah Hake, studying gene regulatory mechanisms in plant morphology.

Leiboff has authored key publications advancing plant developmental genetics, including “Genetic control of morphometric diversity in the maize shoot apical meristem” (Nature Communications, 2015), “Reconstructing the transcriptional ontogeny of maize and sorghum supports an inverse hourglass model of inflorescence development” (Current Biology, 2019), “Parallel global profiling of plant TOR dynamics reveals a conserved role for LARP1 in translation” (eLife, 2020), “Network Analyses Identify a Transcriptomic Proximodistal Pre-Pattern in the Maize Leaf Primordium” (New Phytologist, 2021), and “Spatial inheritance patterns across maize ears are associated with transposable element activity” (The Plant Journal, 2026). His scholarly impact is evidenced by contributions to high-profile journals and securing competitive funding as PI or collaborator, such as NSF IOS-2211434 ($1.06M to Leiboff, 2022-2025) for uncovering vascular function in maize, USDA-NIFA 2023-67013-39537 ($606K, 2024) for genetic networks in grain production, and NSF IOS-1922543. Awards include the 2016 Barbra McClintock Award (Cornell CALS), 2015 poster prizes (Cornell CALS SIPS Retreat, FASEB), 2019 Outstanding Short Talk (FASEB), and 2013 Cornell CALS Outstanding TA Award.