Alumni

William “Jay” Meany graduated with a degree Agribusiness Management from the University of Delaware College of Agriculture & Natural Resources in 1981. He, along with his wife – Kathleen – are the proud parents to three University of Delaware alumni –

• Jessica – a 2007 graduate from the College of Agriculture & Natural Resources
• Daniel – a 2009 graduate of the College of Agriculture & Natural Resources; and
• Sarah – a 2013 graduate from the Lerner College of Business

Jay serves as President of Hy-Point Farms, located in Northern, New Castle County – Delaware. Founded in 1919, the company employs over 110 people – Jay has been with the family operation for over 60 years. Currently, there are 12 members of the Meany family working with the company!

Along with his family, Jay has been a tremendous partner and friend of the College of Agriculture & Natural Resources through the years – specifically to the dairy initiatives and UDairy Creamery operations. In 2015, Jay and Kathleen established the Dr. U. Carl Toensmeyer Scholarship to support students in UD’s Food and Agribusiness program.

David McNear is a first generation college student. He started out at community college where he earned an Associate’s degree in Life Sciences before transferring to Pennsylvania State University where he earned a B.S. degree in environmental resource management (ERM) with a minor in environmental engineering. After spending ~ 9 months working for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) and a hazardous materials emergency response company he went back to school at Penn State where he earned an M.S. degree in Environmental Pollution Control with a focus in Soil Chemistry. He then went on to earn his PhD in Feb of 2006 with Dr. Donald Sparks in the Environmental Soil Chemistry lab at the University of Delaware. He joined the faculty at the University of Kentucky Department of Plant and Soil Sciences in Jan 2007.

McNear is a Professor of Rhizosphere Science in the University of Kentucky Department of Plant and Soil Sciences where he operates the Rhizolab (www.rhizolab.com). His research team investigates the influence of plant breeding on root system architecture (RSA) and the biogeochemical processes occurring at the plant root-soil interface (a.k.a. rhizosphere) over multiple spatial scales; assessing the influence of these processes on carbon and nutrient cycling in managed and unmanaged ecosystems. The aim of the lab is to unravel the inherent complexity of the rhizosphere to help solve some of the most critical problems facing the World today (climate change, food security, ecosystem integrity)

Kishana Taylor is a virologist, co-founder and president of the Black Microbiologists Association and advocate for minority groups in STEM. Dr. Taylor received her B.S. in Animal Science from the University of Delaware where she was named a Woman of Promise in addition to being an EPSCoR and Summer Institute Research Scholar.

After earning her B.S. in Animal Science from UD, Taylor earned an M.S. in Public Health Microbiology and Emerging Infectious Disease from George Washington University and a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Biomedical Sciences from the University of Georgia. Her research focused on developing laboratory animal models of virus transmission for epizootic hemorrhagic disease virus. She also served in postdoctoral roles at the University of California, Davis and Carnegie Mellon University and as a graduate research assistant for the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study.

Currently, Taylor is a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University, Newark and adjunct professor at Mercy College. Her current research focuses on the ecology, evolution and epidemiology of endemic vector-borne viruses. Dr. Taylor’s research interests include arboviruses, zoonotic viruses and their epidemiology, ecology and evolution. Dr. Taylor also serves as the counselor for virology trainees with the American Society for Virology.

As an undergraduate researcher at UD, she studied avian infectious viruses as well as plant infectious fungal diseases and have experience with both molecular biology and virology techniques. As a master’s student, her final project was an assessment of the presence of antibiotic resistant and extra-intestinal E. coli in watersheds with high poultry production density.

Yihuan Xu is a Senior Director in Biometrics Department, TG Therapeutics, where she works as a biostatistician to provide statistical support for clinical development of Multiple Sclerosis program. Prior to Joining TG, Yihuan worked as a biostatistician in BeiGene and Eli Lilly and Company – NJ for more than years, supporting multiple oncology drug development programs and leading multiple late phase clinical trials. Before that, Yihuan was a biostatistician in Thomas Jefferson University Cancer center, providing statistical support on cancer research across cancer biology to clinical studies.

Yihuan got her medical degree from Peking University Health Science Center, M.S. degrees in Molecular Biology and Statistics from University of Delaware, and Ph.D. in Statistics from Temple University.

Her research interest is in survival analysis in oncology clinical trials, especially in biomarker enrichment study design, non-proportional hazard survival analysis.