2026 Innovation Award recipient for the Outstanding St. Louis Scientists Awards
Dr. Nadia Shakoor is a plant scientist at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and a co-founder and Chief Science Officer of Agrela Ecosystems, a St. Louis-based technology company.
She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, earned a Master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and conducted her Ph.D. research in sorghum functional genomics through the University of South Carolina and Chromatin, Inc. Dr. Shakoor joined the Danforth Center in 2014 and helped lead major multi-institutional efforts advancing crop genomics and field phenotyping, including the Gates Foundation-funded Sorghum Genomics Toolbox and the ARPA-E TERRA-REF program, which developed new infrastructure and analytics for large-scale, field-based crop measurement.
As a Principal Investigator at the Danforth Center, Dr. Shakoor leads research that connects crop genetics with field measurement and develops approaches that quantify how crops perform across variable environments. In parallel, through Agrela Ecosystems, she helps translate research advances into deployable sensing systems and data workflows designed for real-world agricultural conditions. Her work spans sensor platform development, field experimentation, and practical data infrastructure that supports crop improvement and agricultural research. Across both roles, Dr. Shakoor focuses on making high-quality field data easier to collect, interpret, and use so scientific insights can be tested at scale and inform decisions where they matter most.