The Ward lab is part of the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology in the College of Biological Sciences (CBS) and the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS). Our lab and offices are located in the Biological Sciences Center on the St. Paul Campus of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.

In the Ward lab we are interested in the function of metabolite transporters in the plasma membrane and vacuole membrane and their role in long-distance transport in plant vascular tissue. We use the tools of molecular biology, electrophysiology, and genetics to study membrane protein structure/function and transgenic approaches to understand the roles of genes encoding membrane proteins in plants.