Yan Ren-Butcher, Ph.D., is a Technical Sales Plant Scientist at RAYN Growing Systems (parent company-ETC). After earning her Ph.D. in Horticulture Science from Texas A&M University in 2011, Yan began her professional career as a Plant Scientist at Phillips Research, the lighting company. In addition to managing various research projects with universities, she co-published the results of multiple studies in peer-reviewed journals. In 2015, she started a Product Manager role at Hubbell Lighting to facilitate photobiology findings into new product developments. Afterwards, she shifted back to the scientific world and served as Director of Horticulture Science at Illumitex, a leading LED horticultural lighting company, until August 2019. Her job focused primarily on providing horticultural LED lighting educational trainings and scientific contents for marketing materials (such as white papers, grower guides and blogs), leading product trials, collaborating with research institutions and universities, as well as providing sales support to customers/growers. She represented previous companies as a member of several standard development committees. With her years of work experience in horticultural lighting for controlled environmental agriculture (CEA), she joined an indoor vertical farming company, 80 Acres Farms, from 2021 to 2022 as a Plant Scientist, to lead multiple research projects helping improve grow recipes in several leafy green crops.
Yan possesses countless years of experience, focusing largely on helping to bridge the knowledge gap between lighting and horticulture to ensure her customers understand the value of lighting technology to discover the right lighting solutions for their applications. She also enjoyed being a conference speaker / guest lecturer to teach fundamental or advanced level classes to illustrate effects of light on plant growth and development as well as LED applications in Controlled Environmental Agriculture (CEA).