The 2015 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program results are in! Congratulations to all the students listed below. Also, kudos and thanks to each student’s dedicated SURF mentor. SURF AWARD RECIPIENTS Doctoral-Granting Institutions Kevin Bird, University of Missouri Allison Butt, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Hailey Cambra, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Maxwell Choka, Queen’s University … Read more
Eric Hamilton, from Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL), has been awarded the 2015 ASPB/AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellowship. He will spend 10 weeks this summer training as a science journalist at the Milwaukee Journal- Sentinel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Eric is a PhD candidate in the Plant and Microbial Biosciences program at WUSTL, … Read more
Dr. Bob Goldberg is well known for his research contributions to plant biology, particularly in the area of reproductive development. He has generated fundamental discoveries that have also resulted in applications in industry, such as the development of the Barnase-Barstar male sterility system together with PGS in Belgium. Bob later served as cofounder and director … Read more
Dr. Craig Pikaard, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Indiana University, Bloomington, is honored for his seminal work and important discoveries in the fields of nucleolar dominance, gene silencing, and the role and function of the atypical polymerases IV and V. Craig will convene the Martin Gibbs Medal Symposium at Plant Biology 2016. The Martin Gibbs Medal, … Read more
Dr. Caren Chang is well known for her pioneering work in ethylene signaling, and she has continued to contribute significantly in this area by elucidating signaling mechanisms and physical connections among the different players in the ethylene-signaling pathway. By helping to fill major long-standing gaps in the pathway, Caren’s work has provided new advances in … Read more
The 2015 Excellence in Education Award acknowledges the outstanding contributions of Dr. Stanley Roux. During a career spanning more than thirty years, Stan has made a considerable impact at his institution by expanding the curriculum while developing and adopting innovative pedagogical methods. Both in the classroom and in his laboratory, Stan has emphasized meaningful hands … Read more
Dr. Joe Louis is recognized for his significant contributions to the field of plant insect interactions, as well as for his demonstrated excellence in outreach, public service, mentoring and teaching. Joe’s research work has shown that specific elicitors delivered by insects are recognized by plants to induce innate defense mechanisms. His research publications are in … Read more
Corresponding Member status is conferred by election on the annual ASPB ballot. This honor, initially given in 1932, provides life membership and Society publications to distinguished plant biologists outside the United States. Renate Scheibe, University of Osnabrueck, Germany Renate Scheibe is a leading contributor to our understanding of redox regulation in plants, extending from metabolic … Read more
The Early Career Award acknowledges outstanding research by a scientist generally not more than seven years post-Ph.D. This year’s Early Career Award recipient is Dr. Daniel Chitwood, who is recognized for his extraordinary contributions to the systems analysis of large, diverse and complex data sets that encompass morphological and 3 molecular traits. The methods that … Read more
Dr. Maria Harrison, Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Science, has pioneered studies of phosphate acquisition in arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbioses using the model legume Medicago truncatula. In particular, her findings that phosphate transport is linked to maintenance of symbiosis and that plants use classic hormone signaling pathways for regulation of the AM symbiosis have ushered … Read more
Wendy F. Boss, North Carolina State University, Raleigh This year’s Charles Reid Barnes Life Membership Award for lifelong service in plant biology goes to Wendy F. Boss. Wendy is recognized for her trailblazing three decades of work in the particularly challenging fields of phosphoinositide biochemistry and inositol phosphate signaling pathways; for her outstanding roles in … Read more
Cyril Zipfel, who heads The Sainsbury Laboratory, is the 2015 recipient of the Charles Albert Shull Award. Cyril played a leading role in the discovery of pattern-triggered immunity in plants, including the characterization of the bacterial peptides flagellin (flg22) and EF-Tu (elf18) as pattern-associated molecular markers that activate signaling by the receptor-like kinases FLS2 and … Read more
The inaugural 2015 ASPB Innovation Prize for Agricultural Technology is awarded jointly to Sherri Brown, David Fischhoff, Mike Koziel, and Fred Perlak. Their leadership of pioneering research and development teams led to the engineering of commercially viable varieties of cotton and corn that express derivatives of insecticidal proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis. The insect-resistant crops that … Read more
Dear US ASPB members: A very important report, “Spurring Innovation in Food and Agriculture: A review of the USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Program,” was recently published by the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences. A large portion of the researchers in our community are, have been, or will … Read more
Last but not least, as a very active member of the iConnect team, I went to the workshop regarding the funding opportunities available from three of the most important federal agencies in the United States: USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), DOE (Department of Energy) and NSF (National Science Foundation). It was very popular, as … Read more
I was eagerly waiting to write a post on this topic. This workshop attracted a lot of conference attendees, since current day plant biology research cannot move forward without these resources. Unfortunately it was kind of an effort to pack too many eggs in one basket within a limited time which could not meet expectations … Read more
PUI=a category within academia, RUI=a category of NSF grants, phooey=what we say when realizing a session already started. The Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUI) Networking Event had a great turnout and fruitful discussion Saturday morning. This event is the opportunity for faculty from institutions that award no (or few) PhDs in the sciences to connect and share ideas for maintaining … Read more
A handy list of plant science grant and fellowship opportunities with deadlines in early 2014. Please leave a comment if you know of other opportunities we should promote. ASPB Travel Grant Program for Plant Biology 2014 ASPB is offering up to 80 $575 grants for students, postdocs, and faculty beginning their careers to attend the … Read more
