JOINT ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
American Society of Plant Biologists and the Sociedad Mexicana de Bioquímica Rama: Bioquímica y Biología Molecular de Plantas

Award Honorees at Plant Biology 2008
Congratulations to the winners of this year’s ASPB awards. The following presentations were made during the Saturday, June 28, ASPB Awards Ceremony in Mérida, Mexico.

ASPB–Pioneer Hi-Bred International Graduate Student Prize
The ASPB–Pioneer Hi-Bred International Graduate Student Prize is an investment in our nation’s future scientists and is intended to recognize and encourage innovative research and leadership in an area of plant biology related to important crops. Five outstanding graduate students were awarded for 2008. The Awards Committee was extremely impressed by the excellence of all the nominees. The award winners have demonstrated an impressive array of research accomplishments and show tremendous promise as future leaders of the plant biology community. The winners are, in alphabetical order:

Colleen Doherty
Colleen is a PhD student at Michigan State University in the laboratory of Mike Thomashow. Colleen’s dissertation research focuses on understanding how plants respond to cold stress. Her work focuses on characterizing the regulation of CBF2, an important cold-responsive transcription factor. Colleen is also interested in identifying and characterizing novel cold-response pathways that are independent of the CBF genes. Her studies of transcriptome changes during cold stress have incorporated computational approaches to model a cold-responsive transcriptional network. Her research findings are providing a detailed understanding of the transcriptional changes that plants undergo in response to cold stress. Colleen hopes to improve her computational skills and has a long-term goal of modeling plant responses to multiple environmental stresses. In addition to exceptional research promise, Colleen also shows great promise as a teacher; she has been a talented mentor to a number of undergraduate students. She is also an active member of ASPB, currently serving as a student ambassador and as the graduate student representative on the Membership Committee.

Tracie Hennen-Bierwagen
Tracie is a PhD student at Iowa State University in the laboratory of Alan Myers. Tracie’s dissertation research uses a biochemical approach to identify and characterize protein complexes involved in starch metabolism. Multiple isoforms of starch biosynthetic enzymes are found in plants, and these have been previously postulated to function in multi-subunit enzyme complexes. Tracie’s research provides the first direct evidence for the existence of these enzyme complexes. She has successfully reconstituted some complexes from recombinant proteins, and she is making use of mutant maize lines to determine the function of specific isoforms in enzyme complex assembly. Tracie is the first author on a paper in Plant Physiology that describes some of this work. She also has a passion for teaching; she served as an organizer for an introductory lab course for new graduate students at Iowa State and has mentored undergraduates and high school teachers. Finally, her talents extend beyond plant biology; for several years she has served as an instructor in an honors seminar course at Iowa State entitled “Tolkien’s Mythology.”

Charles “Chip” Hunter III
Chip is a PhD student at the University of Florida in the laboratory of Karen Koch. His dissertation research revolves around characterization of cell wall biosynthesis enzymes. Specifically, he has been interested in understanding the roles of two distinct subfamilies of the cellulose synthase superfamily in maize. Chip has used reverse genetics to identify Mu transposon insertions in members of the CslA and CslD gene families. This effort has required that he develop and optimize methods for PCR-based screening of DNA pools isolated from the Uniform Mu population. He has developed standardized methods for these screens that are being used by teams of undergraduates. He has successfully identified insertions in several Csl genes and is in the process of characterizing them. His work promises to provide important information about cell wall biosynthesis. Chip is developing excellent teaching and leadership skills. His dedication to public outreach and education is apparent from his activities in mentoring undergraduates and working with high school science teachers. He ultimately hopes to use his research expertise working toward crop improvement in an industrial setting.

Michael A. Grillo
Michael is a PhD student at Michigan State University in the laboratory of Tao Sang. His research focuses on understanding the genetic mechanisms underlying adaptation, using wild rice as a model. He has used QTL mapping to identify and map QTLs that control a number of important adaptive traits. He is now focused on identifying the genes responsible for flowering time QTLs. Mike is collaborating with scientists at the Central Rice Research Institute in India (CRRI) to develop field sites that will allow him to examine how individual traits in wild rice species have contributed to local adaptation to specific environments. Mike also has a passion for teaching and outreach. He has served as a teaching assistant in several classes, and while he was an undergraduate he served as the director of the MSU organization Science Theater, which presented entertaining science demonstrations to the public. Mike hopes to continue his career in research as a university professor studying mechanisms of plant adaptation to diverse environments.

Ajay Sandhu
Ajay is a PhD student at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in the laboratory of Sally Mackenzie. His dissertation research focuses on mitochondrial biology. To examine the effect of destabilizing the mitochondrial genome, Ajay used RNAi to down-regulate the expression of MSH1, a nuclear gene that functions to maintain mitochondrial genome stability. Remarkably, down-regulation of MSH1 resulted in an array of phenotypes that were conserved in several different plant species. Ajay found male sterility, leaf variegation, and plant stunting, each associated with a specific mitochondrial genome rearrangement. He also identified a mitochondrial genome rearrangement associated with heat tolerance. This research resulted in a first-author publication in PNAS last year. Ajay’s research may lead to the development of new approaches for inducing cytoplasmic male sterility, an important and poorly understood agronomic trait. Ajay hopes to ultimately conduct research in an agricultural industry.

Early Career Award
The Early Career Award was instituted by the Society’s Executive Committee in 2005 to recognize outstanding research by scientists at the beginning of their careers. This award is a monetary award made annually for exceptionally creative, independent contributions by a member of the Society who is not more than five years post-PhD on January 1 of the year of the presentation.

Ping He
Ping He is an exceptionally talented and creative young scientist who has already demonstrated his productivity in diverse areas of plant biology. Ping started his scientific career under the guidance of Professor Lihuang Zhu in the Institute of Genetics in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His work on pollen culture and QTL mapping in rice not only resulted in an impressive number of first-authored papers but also contributed significantly to the rice genome project as a whole. As a PhD student in Professor Jian-Ming Zhou’s laboratory at Kansas State University, Ping completed three research projects using wheat, tomato, and Arabidopsis on topics that ranged from allopolyploidy alteration of gene expression to innate immunity. Building upon his graduate studies on type III effectors in the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae, Ping joined Professor Jen Sheen’s laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital. A combination of using a protoplast-based assay system and Ping’s talent, vision, and pioneering spirit resulted in the discovery that two P. syringae type III effectors, AvrPto and AvrPtoB, block FLS2-mediated immune response signaling by targeting the FLS2-associated transmembrane receptor kinase BAK1, promoting pathogenicity. These results help to explain the “gene-for-gene” hypothesis for host response and non-host resistance. Ping’s accomplishments are described by his current mentor as being of fundamental impact and others as spectacular and spearheading transformative research on the molecular mechanisms underlying the plant immune response. Beyond his own accomplishments, Ping also maintains many collaborative efforts in and outside his lab and contributes generously to the success of these projects. His current effort and long-term goal is to examine the interaction between calcium-dependent protein kinases and MAPKs in various stress response signaling pathways. It can be expected that Ping will continue to conduct outstanding research fueled by his energy, curiosity, passion, and dedication.

Charles Albert Shull Award
Created in 1971 to honor the Society’s founding father and the first editor-in-chief of Plant Physiology, this award is designed to recognize young researchers. It is a monetary award made annually and is given for outstanding investigations in the field of plant biology by a scientist who is under 45 years of age on January 1 of the year of presentation or who is fewer than 10 years from the granting of the doctoral degree. The recipient is invited to address the Society at the annual meeting the following year.

Sheng Luan
Sheng Luan is this year’s recipient of the Charles Albert Shull Award for outstanding investigations in the field of plant biology by a scientist who is under 45 years of age. Sheng received his BS degree in biology from Laiyang Agricultural College in 1982, his MS degree in 1985 from the Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology, and his PhD degree in 1991 from Harvard University under the direction of the late Professor Lawrence Bogorad. He then continued at Harvard with Professor Schreiber for postdoctoral research, where he identified immunophilins as abundant chloroplast proteins and also identified a novel calcineurin-like signaling system in plants. Sheng then joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, and attained the rank of professor within 10 years. Major discoveries made by Sheng and his colleagues have opened up new horizons and have stimulated new areas of research, thereby enlightening the future.

Pioneering contributions have been made by Sheng and his colleagues in four major and distinct areas of plant biology. In calcium signaling, a major question is how plant cells interpret calcium changes specific to a particular signal. Sheng’s work over the past 10 years has established a complex molecular network that decodes calcium signals involving calcineurin B-like proteins (CBLs) that, unlike their animal counterparts, regulate a large family of protein kinases known as CIPKs (CBL-interacting protein kinases). In response to low K-nutrition, myristoylated CBLs target CIPKs to the plasma membrane, where they activate an inward voltage-gated potassium channel (AKT1) responsible for high-affinity potassium uptake. The channel is then inactivated by a specific PP2C-type protein phosphatase to reset the signaling cycle. Thus, Sheng has elucidated a complete signaling pathway responsible for plant response to nutrient stress. Another major contribution to the field of membrane transport involved identification of Mg transporters, MATE-like transporters for alkaloids, and an HKT-type transporter critical for salt tolerance. Of particular significance is the HKT-type sodium transporter that was recently shown to be responsible for salt tolerance in rice. In collaboration with rice breeders in China, Sheng found that expression of this gene in elite rice varieties increases salt tolerance. As a result of this pioneering work, it will be possible to grow rice in saline soils, thereby reclaiming unused land to cultivate crops. Following the trail of signal transduction, Sheng was the first to demonstrate the role of tyrosine dephosphorylation in plant cell regulation by identification of a bona fide tyrosine phosphatase. The tyrosine phosphatases play a key role in regulation of MAPKs and surprisingly in regulation of starch metabolism in plastids. Sheng and colleagues demonstrated that a specific tyrosine phosphatase (DSP4) binds to starch granules in a light- and redox-dependent manner, thereby establishing a new mechanism by which starch metabolism is regulated on a daily basis. The fourth area is also plastid based and involves the immunophilins that are localized in the thylakoid lumen. Sheng demonstrated that these enzymes are regulated in an unusual way; they are activated by oxidation, consistent with their operation in an oxidizing environment. They function as chaperones involved in the assembly and maintenance of photosynthetic complexes. Thus, these studies have relevance to photosynthesis and bioenergy and may also have commercial application for production of medically important proteins in transgenic plants.

In addition to research, Sheng is active in teaching and service to the scientific community involving editorial assignments. He has served on the editorial board of Plant Physiology and is currently an associate editor of Plant Signaling and Behavior and founding editor in chief of Molecular Plant.

Charles Reid Barnes Life Membership Award
This is the oldest award, established in 1925 at the first annual meeting of the Society through the generosity of Dr. Charles A. Shull. It honors Dr. Charles Reid Barnes, the first professor of plant physiology at the University of Chicago. It is an annual award for meritorious work in plant biology; it provides a life membership in the Society to an individual who is at least 60 years old. Membership is not a requirement for the award, and, if appropriate, every fifth award should be made to an outstanding plant biologist from outside the United States.

Tsuneyoshi Kuroiwa
Tsuneyoshi Kuroiwa is the recipient of the 2008 Charles Reid Barnes Life Membership Award. Tsuneyoshi received his SciD from the University of Tokyo in 1971 and subsequently held a faculty position there until his mandatory retirement in 2003. He currently holds a position at Rikkyo (St. Paul’s) University in Tokyo.

Tsuneyoshi is a pioneer in the cytological analysis of chloroplast and mitochondrial dynamics in plants and algae. By combining a variety of sophisticated imaging technologies with the creative use of model systems, he has made outstanding contributions in two important areas of plant cell biology: (1) Mechanisms of organelle division. Tsuneyoshi detailed studies of the plastid and mitochondrial division rings that have been instrumental in establishing the assembly and disassembly dynamics of the division machineries in these organelles and laying a foundation for understanding the functional roles of organelle division components at the molecular level. (2) Mechanisms of maternal inheritance of organellar genomes. Tsuneyoshi discovered that inheritance of organellar DNA in algae, plants, and animals involves active digestion of the paternal DNA. In the context of this work, to better visualize organellar DNA, he developed an improved fluorescence microscope, later marketed by Olympus.

Tsuneyoshi also spearheaded the recent sequencing of the genome of the primitive unicellular red alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae, which he has systematically developed as an evolutionarily important and experimentally tractable model system for analysis of organelle division and other aspects of organelle biology in photosynthetic eukaryotes. In all, he has published over 360 papers throughout his career and continues to publish groundbreaking research on organelle biology and evolution in the top-ranked scientific journals.

Tsuneyoshi has been an influential member of the Japanese scientific community. He has trained and promoted the success of many young scientists and served the plant biology community generously in a variety of editorial and other professional capacities. He is past president of the Botanical Society of Japan and the Japanese Society of Plant Morphologists and is a member of the Science Council of Japan.

Corresponding Membership Award
This honor, initially given in 1932, provides life membership and Society publications to distinguished plant biologists from outside the United States. The honor is conferred by election on the annual ballot. The committee selects no more than three candidates, and these are placed on the ballot for approval of corresponding membership by majority vote. The president notifies successful candidates of their election. Election of a corresponding member is to be considered each year and held if warranted, provided the election will not increase the number of corresponding members beyond two percent of the dues-paying membership.

Chu-Yung Lin
Chu-Yung (CY) Lin has successfully motivated several generations of prominent scientists to study plant biology, many of whom are currently training the future generation(s) of plant biologists in the United States and abroad. A few notable examples of former students and current ASPB members include Renee Sung, David Ho, Heven Sze, and Tony Huang. After a stellar academic career that spans five decades, CY is currently professor emeritus at the Botany Institute, National Taiwan University (NTU). He has also been an active ASPB member since the 1960s and continues to regularly attend the annual Society meetings.

CY’s undergraduate education was in Taiwan, and he obtained a PhD degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1963. His thesis was on plant hormones, a topic that he continued to study as a postdoctoral fellow with Joe Key at Purdue University. This collaboration continued after Joe moved to the University of Georgia, and a number of classic papers emanated from this long-term association. CY returned to Taiwan and NTU in 1966 and quickly rose through the ranks to become professor of plant biology in 1975. During his tenure at NTU he served as chair of the Institute of Plant Biology and dean of the College of Science. His substantial research achievements have been duly noted by the Taiwanese funding agency, the National Science Council, with the award of six Research Distinguished Awards and three Distinguished Awards. In 1998 CY was elected academician in the Academia Sinica, Taiwan.

The distinguished scientific achievements of Chu-Yung Lin mainly center on the response of plants to abiotic stress, namely, anaerobiosis and heat stress. He was the first to show that under anaerobic conditions, polyribosomes rapidly dissociated and a subpopulation of polyribosomes reassembled to direct the synthesis of new proteins including ADH. Following return to aerobic conditions, the full complement of polyribosomes was regenerated and the synthesis of normal proteins restored, in the absence of new mRNA synthesis. This exceptional body of work was published in numerous top-tier journals like PNAS, Journal of Molecular Biology, and Plant Physiology. CY has also been a pioneer in understanding the function of small heat shock proteins (HSP) during plant stress responses. Notably, he showed the accumulation of HSP correlated with the acquisition of thermotolerance. And, similar to the anaerobic response, loss of polyribosomes following heat stress was restored upon return to normal growth temperatures. CY was the first to suggest involvement of the small HSPs in thermotolerance by protecting cellular proteins from thermal inactivation. Again, this seminal work was published in several articles appearing in PNAS.

Federico Sánchez
Federico Sánchez is a full professor (Investigator Titular C) at the Institute of Biotechnology (IBT), Universidad Nacional Autonóma de México (UNAM) at Cuernavaca. UNAM is arguably the premier research university in Mexico, and Federico is considered by many to be Mexico’s leading plant biologist. He was born in Mexico City and received a BS in chemistry and an MSc in biomedical research from UNAM. His graduate work and PhD in the area of microbial genetics was supervised by Francisco Bolivar and Raphael Palacios at UNAM. During the late 1970s, he came to the USA and the lab of Brian McCarthy at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). It was during this period that Federico developed an interest in molecular and cellular studies of the cytoskeleton, through work on the tubulin and actin gene families of Drosophila. He returned to Mexico and was appointed investigator at the Institute of Nitrogen Fixation, UNAM–Cuernavaca, and rose through the ranks to associate professor before switching departments to the IBT. He also twice served as chair of the Department of Plant Molecular Biology, UNAM, was the director of the Centro Internacional de Ciencas, A.C., and is past president of the Sociedad Mexicana de Bioquímica.

Federico’s research focuses on nitrogen metabolism in nitrogen-fixing nodules of legumes and on the role of the cytoskeleton during nodule formation. His early work uncovered roles for the enzymes glutamine synthase and uricase using a combination of molecular biology and biochemistry as nodulin genes in the common bean, Phaseolus vulgaris. A decade after leaving UCSF, he rekindled his interest in the cytoskeleton and developed a continuing collaboration with Peter Hepler to study roles for actin and profilin during the signaling response of root cells to rhizobial bacteria. This has led to an active exchange of many students between the USA and Mexico, many of whom continue to bridge the fields of plant cell biology and molecular biology/biochemistry while establishing their own independent careers. The choice of common bean as a research organism is important for the Mexican agricultural industry but has not been without limitations. However, a major one—the ability to reliably transform this crop plant—was overcome in 2006 by a report from this group of a fascile transformation protocol. Research from Federico and his collaborators is routinely published in the very best journals in the field of plant biology, including Plant Physiology and The Plant Journal.

Federico Sánchez’s impact on the plant biology community extends well beyond Mexico and the United States. He has been an editor and/or served on the editorial board for numerous international journals, including Molecular Plant–Microbe Interactions, Planta, and the Asia-Pacific Journal of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology. He has organized major symposium sessions at past ASPB meetings, with Carmen Quinto co-organized and hosted the 5th Mexico–USA Symposium on Plant Molecular Biology (2003), and is chair of the XII International Congress on Molecular Plant–Microbe Interactions. Importantly, he actively participated in the organization of the recent joint meeting of ASPB and the Sociedad Mexicana de Bioquímica in Mérida, Mexico.

Alessandro Vitale
Alessandro (Sandro) Vitale is the leading plant cell biologist in Italy, but his impact on plant biology is truly international. Sandro is currently research director at the Institute of Agricultural Biochemistry and Biotechnology (IBBA) of the CNR in Milano. He obtained a PhD from the University of Milano in biochemistry and has been on the scientific staff of IBBA since 1982. He also conducted postdoctoral research in the lab of Maarten Chrispeels at UCSD, where he worked on the biosynthesis and intracellular transport/processing of bean phytohemagglutinin.

Sandro is an internationally recognized expert on protein trafficking and plant cell biology. He has made significant contributions to our understanding of protein folding and quality control in the endoplasmic reticulum, the site of protein import for the endomembrane system. He has also pioneered work on the biosynthesis and targeting of vacuolar proteins in plants, the ultimate destination for many storage proteins and major site of protein degradation. These findings are routinely published in the very best plant biology journals, including Plant Physiology and The Plant Cell. Exploiting this knowledge of protein targeting, Sandro has recently extended his research into biopharma. His group created an artificial storage protein, zeolin, which shows great potential for adding an essential high methionine trait to protein of low-sulfur-content crops. Emphasizing the promise of this research for third world countries, the Gates Foundation cassava improvement project has chosen this topic to increase the nutritional value of cassava and promote its use as a staple in Africa.

Sandro has provided valuable service to the ASPB community, including a five-year stint as coeditor of The Plant Cell, during which he set very high standards of quality and fairness. Furthermore, Sandro continues to serve on the editorial or advisory boards for several international journals of plant biology, including Planta, Journal of Experimental Botany, and Plant & Cell Physiology. He has also organized numerous symposia in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Through review articles, the popular press, and other avenues for educating the public and politicians, Sandro has been a strong proponent and ambassador for plant biotechnology issues in Italy and the EU.

Fellow of ASPB Award
Established in 2007, the Fellow of ASPB Award may be granted in recognition of distinguished and long-term contributions to plant biology and service to the Society by current members in areas that include research, education, mentoring, outreach, and professional and public service. Current members of ASPB who have contributed to the Society for at least 10 years are eligible for nomination. Recipients of the Fellow of ASPB honor, which may be granted to no more than 0.2% of the current membership each year, receive a certificate of distinction and a lapel pin.

Dan Bush
Dan is recognized for his research on assimilate transport and regulation of source–sink partitioning. He has identified sucrose and amino acid transporters and mechanisms regulating their expression and abundance. Dan’s dedication to ASPB and his leadership have had a lasting impact on the strength and vitality of the Society today. As secretary and Program Committee chair (1999–2001), Dan brought new innovations to the meeting program to attract younger scientists. Under his leadership as president of ASPB (2002–2003), the Society transitioned to a new executive director and reorganized the Education Foundation to improve the focus and vitality of the Society. Dan continues to serve on the Board of Trustees, as chair of the Bogorad Award Committee, and as a member of the editorial board of Plant Physiology.

Jerry Cohen
Jerry is known for his pioneering studies of auxin biosynthesis and metabolism. He identified and characterized endogenous auxins and developed stable isotope methods to quantify auxins. This work was seminal to understanding the mode of auxin action. Jerry’s commitment to ASPB is evident from his service on the editorial board of Plant Physiology from 1986 to 1992 and on the Executive Committee of ASPB, representing the Washington, D.C., section, from 1995 to 1998. During this same period he chaired the Membership Committee and dedicated his tenure to developing new approaches for attracting young members to ASPB.

Sabeeha Merchant
Sabeeha is recognized for her studies of metal ion metabolism. Her work has revealed the importance of copper scavenging enzymes for chloroplast biogenesis and for electron transport in both the chloroplast and mitochondria. Sabeeha served as coeditor of The Plant Cell from 2002 to 2004, and her term as editor of Annual Review of Plant Biology extends from 2003 to 2009. She chaired the Early Career Award Committee from 2004 to 2007, and she served on the Minority Affairs Committee (2000–2003) and the Shull Award Committee (1999–2001). She was instrumental in establishing the Lawrence Bogorad Award.

Jack Preiss
Jack is recognized for his enormous contributions to our understanding of starch and glycogen biosynthesis, including the engineering of potato tuber to increase starch content in 1992 and the determination of the crystal structures of the E. coli branching enzyme and the potato tuber ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase in the first half of this decade. Through his long years as associate editor (1980–1992) and editorial board member (1992–1995) of Plant Physiology, Jack established standards for articles in plant biochemistry. He is recognized for his teaching in the plant biochemistry course and his long-term commitment and leadership in the international arena in promoting plant biochemistry through meetings and workshops. Although it has been over half a century since he published his first paper, he continues an outstanding record of distinguished teaching and research.

Charles F. Kettering Award
This award was established by an endowment from the Kettering Foundation in 1962 to recognize excellence in the field of photosynthesis. It is a monetary award to be given in even-numbered years to an individual for meritorious work in photosynthesis.

Robert E. Blankenship
The Charles F. Kettering Award of the American Society of Plant Biologists for 2008 is awarded to Robert Blankenship. This award, established by the Kettering Foundation in 1962, is intended to recognize excellence in the field of photosynthesis. In Bob’s 30-year career, he has set very high standards in research, teaching, and service.

Bob’s impact on the field of photosynthesis has been broad and multidisciplinary, encompassing photosynthetic bacteria, algae, and terrestrial plants. His many publications in highly regarded journals are testimony to his seminal and varied contributions in areas as wide-ranging as primary electron transfer events, antennae structure and function, the origin and evolution of photosynthesis, and even in astrobiology. In his extraordinarily diverse research, he has studied photosystems using fast spectroscopy and many other biophysical approaches. Bob’s research has been key to our understanding of the antenna systems and reaction centers of plant photosystems I and II, cyanobacteria, and the purple and green bacteria, and he has pioneered investigations of unusual photosynthetic organisms such as the heliobacteria and a newly discovered green sulfur photosynthetic bacterium living near deep-sea hydrothermal vents that utilizes light from geothermal radiation.

Bob’s interest in the evolution of photosynthesis was kindled during his early experience in teaching as assistant professor at Amherst College. Since then, he has developed a world-class research program producing far-reaching insights through use of molecular and genomic approaches to explore the evolutionary pathway between anoxygenic and oxygenic photosynthesis. The structure-based sequence comparisons of reaction center complexes performed by Bob and his colleagues, across most groups of phototrophs, resulted in a widely accepted proposal of a unified evolutionary tree in which horizontal gene transfer has been a central feature.

While chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Arizona State University, Bob was instrumental in attracting federal funding to establish the Center for the Study of Early Events in Photosynthesis. Under his leadership over 10 years, the center gained widespread recognition as the leading group of investigators in photosynthesis, all of whom Bob recruited.

Bob has provided unparalleled service to the field of photosynthesis, of which three contributions stand out as particularly significant. He was editor in chief of Photosynthesis Research for 11 years, and his hard work was important to the success the journal enjoys today. Subsequently, he served as president of the International Society of Photosynthesis Research, 2001–2004. Finally, his 2002 textbook, Molecular Mechanisms of Photosynthesis, was a tremendous undertaking to cover the molecular basis of the life-essential processes of photosynthesis; it is recognized as a standard primer in the field. Bob has obviously been interested in the big picture of how photosynthesis evolved, its diversity among organisms, and the variations of mechanisms that organisms use to harvest and utilize solar energy. His exceptional personal and organizational skills, enthusiasm, and interest in education have also made him a very effective advocate for general scientific and photosynthetic research. His achievements exemplify the qualities recognized by the Charles F. Kettering Award.

Lawrence Bogorad Award for Excellence in Plant Biology Research
The ASPB Lawrence Bogorad Award for Excellence in Plant Biology Research was approved by the Society’s Executive Committee in 2005 to honor Dr. Bogorad’s many contributions to plant biology, including his influential efforts to bring the techniques of molecular biology to bear on problems in plant biology; his groundbreaking research on chloroplast genetics, biogenesis, structure, and function; and his inspired teaching and mentoring. The ASPB Lawrence Bogorad Award for Excellence in Plant Biology Research is a monetary award made biennially to a plant scientist whose work both illuminates the present and suggests paths to enlighten the future. This award was awarded for the first time in 2006.

Steven Huber
In awarding the Lawrence Bogorad Award for Excellence in Plant Biology Research to Steve Huber, we recognize a pioneering researcher in photosynthesis and plant metabolism. Over his 30-year career, Steve has to his credit a remarkable series of novel discoveries and breakthrough contributions that have led the way in shaping our current understanding of the intersection of leaf nitrogen metabolism and photosynthetic carbon metabolism. In particular, Steve is a world authority on the mechanisms of protein modification in plant enzyme regulation and signal transduction. While his various projects connect through the mechanisms of protein modification, they are diverse in the sense of investigating a wide range of important agricultural issues ranging from the control of seed composition, to stress-associated signaling, to the mechanisms of hormone action. A key to the exceptional long-term success and prominence of Steve’s science is that as his research projects mature and the underlying mechanisms are revealed, he moves fearlessly on to the next system and the next question that will drive the next step in understanding the control and mechanism of leaf CN metabolism.

Steve brings the type of focus and adventurous spirit to his science that was exemplified in the extraordinary career of this award’s namesake. Steve has never been afraid to tackle a difficult problem, and he always makes significant progress. Indeed, the breadth of his success can be measured in several tangible ways, including his recognition as an ISI Highly Cited author, designating him as one of “the world’s most influential researchers.” Further demonstration of research impact is whether the work has led to textbooks being rewritten, and Steve’s research has done just that. His seminal work elucidating the regulatory mechanisms for sucrose synthesis and nitrogen metabolism changed our basic understanding of both carbon and nitrogen metabolism in plants. These concepts are now an integral part of undergraduate and graduate plant physiology and biochemistry textbooks. For example, Professor Hans Heldt notes that his 2005 Academic Press Plant Biochemistry text highlights “the findings of Steve Huber on the regulation of sucrose phosphate synthase and nitrate reductase.”

Steve is in the midst of a truly exceptional scientific career in plant biology. In addition to his scientific achievements, he is a dedicated mentor of students and postdocs, a valued colleague and adviser, and an unselfish promoter of the discipline.

Stephen Hales Prize
This award honors the Reverend Stephen Hales for his pioneering work in plant biology published in his 1727 book Vegetable Staticks. It is a monetary award established in 1927 for a scientist, whether or not a member of the Society, who has served the science of plant biology in some noteworthy manner. The award is made annually. The recipient of the award is invited to address the Society on a subject in plant biology at the next annual meeting.

Peter Quail
Peter Quail has made seminal contributions to elucidating the molecular mechanisms of phytochrome action and red-light phototransduction. These studies were initiated during his postdoctoral studies in the Biologisches Institut at the Universität Frieburg and continue to this day in his current positions as research director of the Plant Gene Expression Center and professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley. Peter has also mentored numerous scientists, served on national scientific panels and the editorial boards of plant journals, and worked with the Rockefeller Foundation to advance plant biotechnology in underdeveloped countries.

Peter initially employed biochemical and physiological approaches in the study of phytochrome, which culminated in purification of the intact protein and for the first time allowed an accurate assessment of the protein’s spectral properties. Peter and co-workers then launched the modern era for molecular genetic analysis of phytochromes by cloning and sequencing the first PHY gene. It was not long before he showed that phytochromes exist as a family of photoreceptors and began to unravel their varying regulatory roles in plant growth and development by employing an increasingly wide-ranging set of biochemical, molecular, genetic, and genomic approaches.

In recent decades Peter has expanded his studies beyond the photoreceptors to elucidate key components in the phototransduction pathway. These studies have resulted in paradigm shifts in our understanding of how transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms operate in plants. Significant here were the discovery of COP1 and the central role it plays in repressing photomorphogenesis, the uncovering of the transcriptional network regulated by phytochrome, and the identification of the phytochrome-interacting transcription-factor PIF3. The PIF family of transcription factors is a central component of the current model for phytochrome signaling, in which light-activated phytochrome translocates into the nucleus and then directly interacts with transcription factors to activate target genes.