Patrick received his PhD degree from the University of Missouri in 2012, and was a NSF National Plant Genome Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow at UC-Berkeley and University of Arizona from 2012-2015. He joined the Michigan State University faculty in Fall 2015. His lab leverages a diverse array of tools and a strong multidisciplinary approach, including comparative genomics, transcriptomics, and systems biology, to investigate gene family dynamics and the evolution of gene-gene interactions following gene and genome duplications. His current research focuses on uncovering the mechanistic basis of subgenome dominance in polyploid crops, largely to guide breeding efforts in blueberry and strawberry.