Korgaonkar did not set out to study aphids. Her training was in microbiology, not plant or insect biology. But she had long been interested in the ways organisms interact and how one species can influence, manipulate, or coexist with another.

She joined the Stern Lab at Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia campus in 2014 as a postdoctoral researcher, prior to Stern’s arrival at the Stowers Institute in 2026.   Prior to joining the lab, she spent two years teaching undergraduate students. She enjoyed the classroom but realized her passion is at the lab bench. What began as a return to hands-on research became permanent when Stern later invited her to remain with the lab.

Then one day, he arrived at work carrying leaves covered in aphid galls.

“He showed up in the lab with a few leaves,” she said. “He showed them to me, and I became fascinated. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.”

That passion led her to Kansas City when Stern made the move. Much of her research, now happening at the Stowers Institute, focuses on aphid galls formed on witch hazel. The relationship amounts to a microscopic contest between two organisms: the plant attempting to defend itself while the aphid manipulates the plant’s developmental machinery for its own benefit.

“The plant fights back,” she said, “but the aphid seems to be winning.”

Studying that contest requires Korgaonkar to move between molecular biology and field biology. Because of their complex life cycle, the aphids cannot simply be maintained generation after generation in the laboratory. Researchers must collect insects and galls directly from nature before bringing them back to Stowers for genetic and molecular studies.

That fieldwork has only deepened her fascination with the remarkable diversity of galls, which can vary dramatically depending on the insect and plant involved. Midge galls formed on pignut hickory trees can resemble prickly gumdrops. Those made by wasps on white oak look like tiny unremarkable bumps on the underside of the leaf.  But when the leaves drop, they appear to “jump” due to the movement of the wasp larvae inside the gall. And an aphid-like insect called an adelgid attacks spruce trees, producing galls that resemble tiny pineapples.

Yet even after centuries of observing so many types of galls, some of the most fundamental questions remain unanswered.

“We’ve known about galls for so long,” Korgaonkar said, “but at the biological level, nobody has understood how galls are made.”

That abundance of unanswered questions is precisely what energizes Korgaonkar. The Stern Lab has already made an important breakthrough in understanding how aphids form galls, identifying a group of proteins delivered through the insects’ salivary glands that can alter plant development. Stern named them Bicycle proteins for their distinctive pair of cysteine-tyrosine-cysteine, or CYC, amino acid motifs: Bi-CYC-le.

As the Stern Lab expands the project with additional plant biologists and trainees, Korgaonkar believes the field may be approaching an important moment.

“With the whole lab working on the problem,” she said, “we can crack this wide open.”

Many scientists are motivated in part by the possibility that fundamental discoveries may someday improve medicine, agriculture, or human health. Korgaonkar appreciates those possibilities and believes the lab’s work could ultimately contribute to broader advances, such as possibly one day using modern gene editing tools to reduce the aphids negative impacts on agriculture as an alternative to chemical pesticides. But her own motivation is often simpler and more immediate: curiosity.

“Uncovering knowledge and making discoveries that lead to medicine or improving our food or health is the ultimate goal in science,” she said. “But the thing that keeps me up at night isn’t how to feed the world or cure disease. What keeps me up at night is figuring out how the Bicycle proteins work.”

Learn more about Korgaonkar's research in the Stern Lab here.