Maricelis Acevedo, from Puerto Rico, is currently the associate director for science for the Delivering Genetic in Wheat project at Cornell University. At the time of her award, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the USDA-ARS Cereal Disease Lab, where she screened wheat landraces from the USDA collection for new sources of stem rust resistance in Njoro, Kenya. Maricelis was cereal rust pathologist and assistant professor at North Dakota State University from 2010-2016.