Mary Williams

I studied Biochemistry at Berkeley (BA), Plant Molecular Biology at Rockefeller (PhD), did a postdoc at Berkeley with Ian Sussex, and then spent 14 years as a Biology professor at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. In 2009 I started working at the American Society of Plant Biologists as Features Editor of the journal Plant Cell and the developer of Teaching Tools in Plant Biology. My passion lies in making it a little bit easier for students of all ages to understand plants and plant science research. I live in Glasgow, Scotland, with my family and our much adored dog.

Applications open for 2017-2018 Plantae Fellows

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Are you a creative, articulate and web-savvy plant scientist looking to connect with other like-minded folks? We need your help to nurture and grow Plantae, the online community for the global plant science community.  We are looking for individuals who are interested in being highly engaged contributors by curating content and facilitating discussions. The benefits … Read more

Recognizing featured Plant Cell first authors, May 2017

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Jennifer Wisecaver, featured first author of A Global Co-expression Network Approach for Connecting Genes to Specialized Metabolic Pathways in Plants Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University. Education: PhD (2012) Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona. BS (2007) Biological Sciences, Humboldt State University. Non-scientific Interests: Spending time with family, friends, and … Read more

Winning entry of the April 2017 “Teaching Tools Proposal” competition

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Please contact Mary Williams if you’d like to discuss submitting a Teaching Tool preproprosal. Investigating Darwin’s “abominable mystery” – the angiosperms, by Sonja Dunbar Flowering plants, the angiosperms, make up roughly 1/6th of the living species currently known. This teaching tool will explore the rapid diversification and success of the flowering plants.This tool will first … Read more

Plant Scientists in the Wild (#FoPD)

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Guest post by Emily Larson  @erlarson_phd and Maria Papanatsiou @m_papanatsiou, postdocs at the University of Glasgow, Scotland If there is one stereotype about some scientists that contains a shred of truth it is that we are definitely indoor kids – at least professionally speaking. We spend a lot of time hunched over benches in the … Read more

New Teaching Tool: It’s not easy being not green

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There’s a new Teaching Tool in town! It’s not easy being not green: the making of a parasitic plant – By Caitlin E. Conn and David C. Nelson. This Teaching Tool explores the biology and evolution of parasitic plants, and their impact on agriculture. In the last portion of the Teaching Tool, the molecular evolution … Read more