Katie Gold

Dr. Kaitlin (Katie) Gold is an Assistant Professor of Grape Pathology in the Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University where she holds primary research and extension responsibilities for grape disease management in New York State.

Dr. Gold’s Grape Sensing, Pathology, and Extension Lab at Cornell (GrapeSPEC) studies the fundamental and applied science of plant disease and plant-microbe interaction sensing to improve integrated grape disease management. The Gold Lab specializes in the use of in situ and imaging spectroscopy (also known as hyperspectral imaging) deployed at a range of spatial scales, from proximal, autonomous rovers to spacecraft, to characterize asymptomatic disease physiology and the impacts of management intervention on early grape disease detection. Visit the Gold Lab website for more information.

Dr. Gold completed her PhD in Plant Pathology and MS in Applied Statistics concurrently at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2019, where her dissertation research pioneered the use of in-situ and imaging spectroscopy for pre-symptomatic disease and diagnosis. Prior to starting her tenure-track position at Cornell, she held a visiting faculty fellowship at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA with the Carbon and Ecosystem Cycling and Imaging Spectroscopy Groups to use AVIRIS-NG hyperspectral imagery for asymptomatic grape disease detection and mapping.

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