Kohl Perry ’26 received honors in the undergraduate research poster competition organized by the Tuskegee University Chapter of Gamma Sigma Delta, the honor society of agriculture, at the 81st Professional Agricultural Workers Conference (PAWC) for his investigation into the use of nanoparticles as a vehicle for delivering biological molecules into plant cells. Perry, a biology major at Tuskegee University who works in Professor Marceline Egnin’s Plant Biotech and Genomics Research lab, conducted a substantial portion of his study during a summer research experience with the Center for Research on Programmable Plant Systems (CROPPS) led by Cornell University.
With this year’s conference theme centered around “unlocking the power of agriculture,” PAWC attracted researchers from 20 Land Grant universities in the U.S. and an international university. Notably, this year’s conference showcased the largest number of student research entries in the conference’s 81-year history and the 20th year for Tuskegee University Honor Society of Agriculture.
Perry earned third place for his poster “Testing Lipid Nanoparticles as an Effective Method for pDNA Delivery into Tomato Plants.” His research aimed to optimize the delivery of plasmid DNA into plant cells using tomato as a model organism. Perry’s study focused on the use of lipid nanoparticles as an improvement on current methods, which are limited in application.
