Dr. Gschwend earned her B.A. degree from Augustana College and her Ph.D. in Plant Biology from the University of Illinois, where her main research interests were crop genomics and the evolution of papaya sex chromosomes.  She carried out her postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago and was awarded the NIH NRSA fellowship to study the role of newly evolved genes in the reproductive fitness of Drosophila melanogaster.  Dr. Gschwend taught at Loyola University for a year before starting at the Ohio State University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Horticulture and Crop Science in 2018. 

Research in the Gschwend lab focuses on understanding how evolutionary forces shape the genetic architecture of crop genomes and contribute to novel traits.  By using comparative and functional genomics techniques, they detect and analyze newly evolved genes contributing to desirable agronomic phenotypes, with the goal of crop improvement.  Currently, the Gschwend lab is investigating the genetic contributions of native North American grapevine species to the cultivars popularly grown in the Eastern and Midwestern United States, with a specific interest in genes underlying cold hardiness.