Madeline ORAVEC

Madeline Oravec (Maddy) is an Assistant Professor of Grapevine Breeding, Genetics, and Genomics in the Horticulture Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University.

She leads the Cornell Grapevine Breeding Program based at the Cornell AgriTech campus in Geneva, New York. Her research program focuses on the genetic understanding and improvement of grapes, with an emphasis on fruit quality, environmental resilience, and biotic resistance. The program’s breeding objectives include developing and releasing novel, resilient, and high-quality wine and table grape varieties and integrating modern phenotyping, genotyping, and selection technologies to improve breeding efficiency.

Before coming to Cornell, Maddy earned an M.S. in Horticulture at Purdue University and Ph.D. in Plant Breeding and Plant Genetics at University of Wisconsin – Madison. She then held two postdoctoral positions, one at the University of Minnesota in a circadian biology lab and the other at UW-Madison in a root vegetable breeding and genetics lab.