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.

Winning entries of the August 2015 “Teaching Tools Proposal” competition

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We had many excellent proposals submitted for the second round of the the “Teaching Tools in Plant Biology” competition, from which we selected two for further development. The competition has one additional submission deadline December 31 2015, and full details can be found at https://blog.aspb.org/2015/03/02/share-your-enthusiasm-teaching-tools-submission-competition/. Here are the two winning proposals and their authors from … Read more

Optimizing Crops for Biocontrol of Pests and Disease

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This week we feature an article published by Stenberg et al in Trends in Plant Science that describes the potential benefits of optimizing crops for biocontrol of pests. It is difficult to estimate the true costs of herbivore damage to crop plants, but it is clearly in the billions of dollars; much more when pesticide … Read more

Did I like The Martian? Yes!

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I went with my sons (22 & 17) and they loved it too, so that’s three thumbs up (we each gave it five out of five stars). The filmmakers have taken a great book and modified it slightly to make a fast-paced, visually stunning, engaging, and even funny movie. I particularly appreciated the fact that … Read more

Plants in the News, 2 October: Cannabis, entry point to plant science or plant-that-must-not-be-named?

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  This week, Nature published an excellent Outlook on cannabis science and policy. How do you feel about cannabis as a topic of discussion in the classroom? I’ve tended to shy away from it – in my experience the benefit of increased interest can be outweighed by the distraction of giggles and jokes. However, this … Read more

Recognizing our “first authors” September 2015

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Recognizing our Authors is a regular blog series that profiles ASPB’s most highly cited authors. Recently, we’ve been profiling first authors of Plant Cell papers that are selected for In Brief summaries. Here we present the first-author profiles from September’s issue of The Plant Cell. Jonathan Flowers, featured author of Whole-Genome Resequencing Reveals Extensive Natural … Read more