Stephen H. Howell
Papers
3
Total Citations
41
H-Index
2
About
Stephen H. Howell is a plant biologist whose research sits at the intersection of controlled environment agriculture, automated phenotyping, and plant stress physiology. Based at Iowa State University, Howell has made significant contributions to the development of advanced infrastructure for studying how plants respond to their environments. His work on the Enviratron — a cutting-edge facility for controlled environmental testing — has helped establish rigorous frameworks for assessing genotype × environment interactions, a foundational concern in modern plant science, earning 23 citations since its 2019 publication. Howell has also pioneered high-throughput phenotyping approaches, most notably through the Robotic Assay for Drought (RoAD) system, an automated platform designed to overcome the traditionally low-throughput nature of brassinosteroid and drought response experiments. This innovation, cited 16 times since 2021, enables researchers to systematically characterize plant hormone pathways and stress responses at scale. Collectively, Howell's contributions reflect a commitment to modernizing plant biology methodology — building the tools and facilities that allow the broader scientific community to ask bigger, more reproducible questions about how plants grow, develop, and adapt under changing environmental conditions.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Assessing plant performance in the Enviratron23 citations · 2019
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