Dept. of Sustainable Bioproducts
Mississippi State University
Frank C.
Owens, PhD
Associate Professor
Since 2001, Frank has been involved in the global marketing and sourcing of wood products. He teaches courses in wood anatomy and forest products marketing at Mississippi State University, conducts research on lumber properties and computer vision applications for wood identification, and serves on the Council of the International Association of Wood Anatomists (IAWA).
Adriana
Costa, PhD
Assistant Professor
Adriana is a botanist with over 20 years' experience in wood identification. Before joining the faculty at Mississippi State University, she taught courses in plant anatomy and morphology for six years at universities in Brazil and curated the largest wood collection in Latin America. She has conducted wood identification studies involving conventional wood anatomy, computer vision, near-infrared spectroscopy, and DNA extraction.
Alex C.
Wiedenhoeft, PhD
USDA Adjunct Professor
Alex is a Research Botanist and Team Leader in the Center for Wood Anatomy Research at the USDA Forest Service Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin. He is also a USDA Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sustainable Bioproducts at Mississippi State University. Curator of the largest wood collection in North America, he has authored several field guides on wood identification and pioneered multiple field-deployable wood identification techniques. He is the cocreator of the XyloTron computer vision wood identification system and creator of the XyloPhone system. On the Team, he participates actively in the research, training, and Xylarium initiatives
Asi
Ebeheakey
Graduate Research Assistant
Asi is our specialist in West African woods. Formerly a timber inspector with the Ghana Forestry Commission, she has coauthored a field identification manual for Ghanaian timbers as well as a paper on computer vision-based wood identification. She holds a bachelor's degree in Forest Resources Technology and a master's degree in Landscape Studies, both from Kwame Nkrumah' University of Science and Technology, Kumasi.
Miftah
Rahman
Miftah is our specialist in Southeast Asian woods. Formerly a lecturer in the Forest Products Department at IPB, Miftah has been involved in many projects including the management of a developing database and search system for students to determine wood species based on wood anatomy. He holds a bachelor's and a master's degree in Forest Products Science and Technology, both from IPB University, Bogor, Indonesia.
Graduate Research Assistant
Kyatt
Spessert
Graduate Research Assistant
Kyatt holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of Alabama and has graduated from the National Hardwood Lumber Association's Inspector Training School. A skilled programmer, he specializes in smartphone app development.