Aleel "Kat" Grennan worked in the lab of Don Ort at the University of Illinois. Her research focused on optimizing canopies by developing plants with lighter green leaves to allow greater penetration of sunlight into the lower crop canopy, boosting the plant's overall photosynthetic efficiency. Kat earned her bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth and went on to earn her doctorate from the University of Illinois. She was a postdoctoral researcher at Washington State University. She left the RIPE project to join the faculty of Worcester State University where she studies the role of the chloroplast in plant growth and development, focusing on plant responses to changing light environments.