Judy Callis Elected Secretary

Judy Callis

Judy Callis became ASPB secretary on October 1 and will serve for the next two years. The secretary is also chair of the Program Committee.

Judy is a faculty member in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and a member of the PhD graduate programs in plant biology, biochemistry and molecular biology, and genetics at the University of California at Davis. She was born in Ohio but grew up in St. Louis, Mo., and received her AB degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1977. She is grateful for excellent mentorship as a student and postdoc. As an undergraduate Judy had the privilege of working in the laboratory of then–assistant professor Virginia Walbot, which started her long research interest in plant biology. After several years as a research technician at University of Wisconsin–Madison, she received an MS in botany in 1981 from the University of Illinois, where she worked with Tuan-hua David Ho on α-amylase isozymes. From there, she moved to Stanford University, where she received a PhD in biology in 1987. During this time, she became interested in the post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. Following that theme, she worked on aspects of ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis with Richard Vierstra at UW–Madison from 1987 to 1989. At the end of 1989 (on Halloween, to be precise), she joined the faculty at UC Davis’s then Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Judy is now a full professor and serves as vice chair for academic personnel in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Judy’s main research interests are in the area of regulated proteolysis, with a focus on the ubiquitin pathway. Combining genetics, biochemistry, and molecular biology, her laboratory is working to understand the specificity of modification of proteins by ubiquitin and the physiological consequence of this change. In addition, her laboratory has studied the cis-acting signals on the Aux/IAA proteins, short-lived repressors of auxin signaling, and defined the residues required for their rapid and auxin-regulated degradation.

Judy has taught metabolism to more than 200 students a year for more than 15 years and co-taught a course in plant biochemistry (that is not quite as big a class). She also enjoys leading a discussion of research literature for undergraduates and supervising both graduate and undergraduates in research. Her service to ASPB includes membership since 1979, member of the Publications Committee 1994–1999 (chair, 1998), member of the ad hoc Web Site Committee 1996–1997, monitoring editor for Plant Physiology, 2000–2006, member of the review panel for summer undergraduate research awards in 2001 and 2003, member of the Corresponding Membership Award Committee 2003–2007, and member of the Program Committee 2006–2010. In 2009, she joined The Plant Cell editorial board. Other professional activities include service on grant review panels for NIH, NSF, USDA, and DOE and serving as an ad hoc reviewer for several journals. She was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2002 and from 2005 to 2010 serves as Ruth R. and Paul K. Stumpf Endowed Chair in Plant Biochemistry.