Independent study fuels Steffl’s research interest

As a fifth grader, Julia Steffl commandeered the family kitchen for a science project to research how yeast works.

Today, her research is in the Dakota BioWorx facility east of the South Dakota State University campus, where she works as a Pioneer BioTech student employee. There, she applies the centuries-old practice of fermentation by using high-tech equipment in a Dakota BioWorx lab to hopefully produce a product that will make life better for her family’s Minnesota farm and improve the lot for all farmers by creating another ag-based product.

Steffl is a junior agricultural and biosystems engineering major from Callaway, Minnesota, about an hour east of Fargo, North Dakota.

Her father and brother produce wheat, corn and soybeans. Like the vast majority of producers, they apply fungicides to combat white mold and sudden death syndrome on soybeans. Synthetic surfactants are added to the fungicides to decrease the surface tension with the leaf and thus increase fungicide coverage on the leaf.

While those chemicals are affective, they also raise health and environmental concerns, Steffl said.

Welcome to Dakota BioWorx
That’s where her research at Dakota BioWorx, which opened in 2023 as an incubator for bioprocessing startups and growing biotech companies, comes in. Matthew Cole founded Pioneer BioTech in 2021 while a Ph.D. student under professor Zhengrong “Jimmy” Gu. Initially housed in the Research Park at SDSU’s Brookings Innovation Center, Pioneer BioTech moved into the Dakota BioWorx space in the neighboring POET Bioproducts Center shortly after opening.

Pioneer BioTech’s focus is on using fermentation of agricultural goods to create value-added bioproducts.

Steffl didn’t know the company background when she reached out to Dr. Cole in February 2025. A scheduling quirk created a need to pick up another credit hour in her major. After discussion between her adviser and professors, Steffl was able to contract a credit of independent study with Cole. “Research was something I had never tried before but figured I would just do it and see what happened,” Steffl said.

She started an internship with Pioneer BioTech in May 2025, and it was like adding yeast to a bread recipe—it caused her interests and skills to grow exponentially.

She fell in love with using “simple ag products (soybean meal) and bioprocessing (fermentation) to make a surfactant that is easily useable and bio friendly.” The surfactant enhances the spreading quality of a fungicide or herbicide, keeps the leaf moistened for a longer period of time and increases leaf penetration.

Ag industry funds research
After interning with both Pioneer BioTech and Dakota BioWorx in summer 2025, Steffl started on her independent study project in August 2025...

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