Jianming Yu is Professor and Pioneer Distinguished Chair in Maize Breeding in the Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University. He obtained his B.S. from Northwest A&F University in 1994, M.S. from Kansas State University in 2000, and Ph.D. from University of Minnesota in 2003. After completing a one-year postdoc at University of Minnesota and another two-year postoc at Cornell University, Yu worked as a faculty at Kansas State University from 2006 to 2012. In 2013, Yu moved his research program to Iowa State University. The focus of Yu’s program is to address significant questions in quantitative genetics by combining cutting-edge genomic technologies and maize breeding. Yu is currently a member of Raymond F. Baker Center for Plant Breeding and a Faculty Scholar of Plant Sciences Institute. His research falls into four categories: breeding strategy, complex trait dissection, genes and genetics, and genomes and chromosomes. Yu teaches a graduate student class, AGRON 621 - Advanced Plant Breeding, each Spring semester. Among other honors, Yu was elected to Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2018.