RESEARCH TEAM

Kevin Donnelly
Horticultural Soil Scientist at Midwest Trading

Recognized in the top 40 under 40 by GPN magazine, he has a passion for the root environment.  Kevin oversees CHSTR at Midwest Trading where he is the technical lead for quality, process and support for soil amendments, growing substrates and engineered soils.  Kevin received a BS from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in Horticulture in 2003 and worked on his MS in Natural Resources and Environmental Science at UIUC prior to joining Midwest Trading in 2006.

Joey Callahan

Horticultural Soil Specialist

Joey Callahan is a graduate from Purdue University with a major in Agricultural Economics and a minor in Crop Science. He has experience in various agricultural settings such as field scouting, corn detasseling, insect rearing, and entomology research.  Joey is beginning his career in the horticultural industry with Midwest Trading as a Quality Assurance Technician.

Collaborators:

Sam Schmitz
Professor of Horticulture Triton College.

Sam spent years managing the Gardens at Ball Seed and is now a professor at Triton College creating passionate horticultural professionals.    He has an extensive background in landscape horticulture and received an MS in Turf Management from the University of Illinois working on divot research.













Alumni

Nate Orlyk

Soils Intern - Midwest Trading 2023

Nate will be graduating from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor in Chemistry and minors in Soil Science and ESPM (Environmental Science Policy and Management). With Midwest, Nate worked with the Ksat and Saturo to develop a standard operating procedure for determining the field hydraulic conductivity of soil samples in the lab. He also worked with the Hyprop to explore soil moisture release curves.

Alexis Matesi
Horticultural Soils Specialist at Midwest Trading
2017-2022

Alexis worked in the lab from 2017-2022
and was responsible for daily operations, lab methods, data collection, and trial implementation. Prior to joining the team, Alexis worked in Conservation and Restoration Ecology as well as grant funded soil research in Wisconsin through the Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program.

Kai Petersen   

Soils Intern at Midwest Trading 2020 

Kai will be graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 2021 with a Bachelors in Technical Systems Management.  

Kai expanded our hydrology research program to include 16 rain barrel hydrology cells and initiated 8 treatment soils for long term study.  He also perfected the use of our Saturo infiltrometer.

                                                   
             

Michael Conway
Soils Intern at Midwest Trading 2019

Michael will be graduating from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in 2020 with a Bachelors in Crop Sciences with concentration in Plant Biotechnology and Molecular and Cellular Biology

Michael was instrumental in installing our plant available water research plots at Ball Hort.  He conducted a number of plant growth trials and built the first set rain barrels for our hydrology research program.

Samual Narang

Soils Intern at Midwest Trading 2018

Sam graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in 2019 with a degree in Agricultural and Biological Engineering.

Sam conducted plant growth trials as well as participating in the early work developing the plant available water research.  He also worked on a prototype for a mini-horhizotron for lab.