Dr. Yelton leads the horticultural lighting industry forward in discovering new ways to optimize crop production and elicit desirable plant characteristics through the use of LEDs. Dr. Yelton offers her experience bringing horticultural best-practices to large-scale commercial cannabis production, both for indoor and greenhouse applications. Melanie is one of the industry’s leading experts in using light spectrum to achieve precision in terpene and cannabinoid production and has used these advanced spectral strategies to improve consistency of new cannabis products.
Prior to joining LumiGrow, Melanie served as a research scientist and lecturer at Stanford University. Melanie completed her postdoctoral training at Stanford as National Institutes of Health Fellow studying plant receptors and signaling. She earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of California, Davis, where her work focused on plant pathogens. She holds an M.S. in the biochemistry of photosynthesis from the University of South Carolina, Columbia and a B.S. in biology from Virginia Tech. The recipient of numerous academic awards and accolades, Melanie holds a patent for her work involving filamentous fungus. Earlier in her career, she served as Director of Sequencing at the Stanford DNA Sequence and Technology Center, a division of the Human Genome Project.