Current Lab Members
Alfred Huo (Ph.D)
Principal Investigator
Dr. Huo joined UF in early 2017. Currently, he is an assistant professor at Mid-Florida Research and Education Center at University of Florida. His current research focuses on breeding of horticultural and ornamental plants including lettuce, grapes, snapdragons, begonia and petunia. His lab applies a new technology called CRISPR-Cas9 and CIRSPR-Cpf1 to these plants for improvement of their quality. CRISPR-Cas9 or CRISPR-Cpf1 can cause genomic editing for knocking out or knocking in genes etc. and can expedite breeding programs that usually require a long term of efforts. His lab also use a type of temperature-inducible transposon Tam3 for mutagenesis of snapdragon, and use transposon-tagging to look for mutations underlying different mutants. In addition, using a lettuce recombinant inbred lines (RILs) mapping population, his lab collaborates with UC-Davis to look for seed-related QTLs.
Dr. Huo originally came from China. He finished his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in horticulture in China before he moved to U.S. for his Ph.D degree in seed development at University of Georgia; then He joined Dr. Kent Bradford lab for postdoctoral research on lettuce seed germination/ dormancy. His current and previous research projects have been sponsored by USDA-NIFA, Rijk Zwann Vegetable B.V. and Florida local agricultural production companies.
His hobbies include cooking, watching movies, practicing yoga.


Matthew Creech
Biological Scientist
Matthew is the chief of this lab .He is in charge of chemical inventory, supplies purchasing, management of greenhouse and growth chambers, lab safety training etc. He has years of experiences in grape tissue culture and regeneration. He is a plant lover and trying to grow different exotic plants in the lab and in his own private nursery. He likes fishing, but not dozens of Koi fishes in his own pond.

Frank Lian
Ph.D Student
Frank joined our lab Fall 2018 and he is currently working on his project for Snapdragon transposon and transformation on snapdragon.
Julian Ginori
Ph.D Student
Julian is our newest Ph.D Student, he received a PBGI fellowship to work on Heat tolerant Begonia. Welcome Julian!
