Aruna Weerasooriya

College of Agriculture & Human Sciences

Prairie View A&M University

 Dr. Aruna has over 25 years’ experience in research in Medicinal Plants and Plant Systematics. Before joining PVAMU, he worked as the Senior Research Scientist at theNational Center for Natural Products Research and the Director of their MedicinalPlants germplasm collection at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) where theyalso had the only legal Cannabis cultivation and research program at that time.

He is also leading the industrial hemp research program at PVAMU and his team includes experts in modern plant sciences to evaluate all the Texas approved hemp strains.  This basicscientific data would help us to understand the genetic complexity of Cannabis andidentify the elite strains suitable for various end-use and recommend feasible hempstrains .