Awais Khan ((born 1977) is a Pakistani-American plant geneticist and an associate professor at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University. His research focuses on genetics of disease resistance in apples, crop improvement, sustainable agriculture, and food security. Prior to taking this position, he was leading a global research program on genetics of adaptation and abiotic stress tolerance in potatoes and sweetpotatoes, at the International Potato Center (CIP), Lima, Peru. Biography Khan was born in a small village called Tahlian in Pallandri, Azad Kashmir (the Pakistani-administered part of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region) and was from a humble financial background. His primary-level education was at a"taat school," where the students sat on a jute mat (taat) on the ground and he also helped his parents raise crops and livestock. He earned a PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland on fire blight of apples, and an MSc from Georg-August University, Gottingen, Germany, with further research experience at the University of York, UK and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA. He has published in several high impact scientific journals including Science, Nature Genetics, and Genome Research. His research on rapid decline of apple trees, fire blight, genetics, and genomics of apples has been also highlighted in popular magazines, including Science Magazine, The Economist, New York Times, and Forbes. In 2022, Dr. Khan co-led a research and completed a chromosome-scale genome sequence assembly of Honeycrisp apples. Selected publications Tegtmeier R, Pompili V, Singh J, Micheletti D, Silva JK, Malnoy M, Khan MA. 2020. Candidate gene mapping identifies genomic variations in the fire blight susceptibility genes HIPM and DIPM across the Malus germplasm. Scientific Reports, 10, 16317. Papp D, Gao L, Thapa R, Olmstead D, Khan MA. 2020. Field apple scab susceptibility of a diverse Malus germplasm collection identifies potential sources of resistance for apple breeding. CABI Agriculture and Bioscience, In Press. Thapa R, Zhang K, Snavely N, Belongie S, Khan MA. 2020. The Plant Pathology 2020 challenge dataset to classify foliar disease of apples. Applications in Plant Sciences, 8 (9), e11390. Singh J, Cobb-Smith D, Higgins E, Khan MA. 2020. Comparative evaluation of lateral flow immunoassays, LAMP, and quantitative PCR for diagnosis of fire blight in apple orchards. Journal of Plant Pathology, https://doi.org/10.1007/s42161-020-00644-w. Yu M, Singh J, Khan MA, Sundin GW, Zhao Y. 2020. Complete genome sequence of the fire blight pathogen Erwinia amylovora strain Ea1189.