Shannon Hurst

Dr. Hurst has spent 25 years teaching middle schoolers, high schoolers and undergraduates the difference between mitosis and meiosis (and gently confiscating phones along the way) before deciding that teaching needed an upgrade to petri dishes. Armed with a doctorate and a career's worth of science and education research under my belt, I have now traded lesson plans for a lab coat.

I am a proud member of our mushroom lab — bridging academic research with real-world production, and probably making at least one "fun-gi" pun per day. After two and a half decades of turning teenagers into scientists, I am thrilled to be growing something new: mushrooms, partnerships, and the occasional bad mycology joke.