Melanie Yelton is a Director of Plant Sciences at Plenty, where she channels research and development team findings to build the world’s most advanced indoor vertical farms. In previous roles, her research has focused on optimizing plant growth, flavor and quality using light, and she holds a patent for work involving filamentous fungus. Melanie served as a lecturer and scientist at Stanford University for more than 25 years, studying plant signaling in alfalfa and corn. She also served as Director of Sequencing at the Stanford DNA Sequence and Technology Center, part of The Human Genome Project. Melanie earned her Ph. D. from the University of California, Davis, in plant molecular biology; a master’s degree in biochemistry from the University of South Carolina; and a bachelor’s degree in biology from Virginia Tech.