Elliot Heffner

Elliot Heffner is a PhD student in the plant breeding program at Cornell University in the laboratory of Mark Sorrells. He is also pursuing minor areas of study in business management and international agriculture and rural development. Elliot’s dissertation research focuses on evaluation of plant breeding methodologies. He is using material in the Cornell Soft White Winter Wheat Breeding Program to test the efficacy of genomic selection, a relatively new plant breeding method. His research will compare results achieved with genomic selection to those obtained from more traditional marker-assisted and phenotypic selection approaches. Elliot has already published a review article on genomic selection in the journal Crop Science, and he is the first author on a publication resulting from a rotation project he conducted. At Cornell, Elliot was a recipient of a USDA National Needs Fellowship and several other awards. He has accumulated an impressive record of service. While president in 2008 of “Synapsis,” the Cornell Plant Breeding and Genetics Graduate Group, Elliot raised funds from industry to finance a trip for Cornell graduate students to attend the National Plant Breeding conference and visit industry field stations. Elliot also has a passion for teaching and is currently teaching genetics to inmates at a local prison. He plans for a career in plant breeding in the private sector.

Justin McGrath

Justin McGrath is a PhD student in plant biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, in the lab of Lisa Ainsworth. His research is focused on understanding how plants respond to changes in carbon dioxide and ozone levels, with a goal of predicting how future climate change will affect the growth, development, and productivity of crop plants. His research uses the free area concentration enrichment (FACE) facilities and has investigated responses in both aspen trees and soybean. Justin monitored a large number of different parameters and has found that elevated carbon dioxide and ozone concentrations affect leaf size, leaf number, and photosynthetic capacity. His research has revealed complex species- and cultivar-specific effects. Justin has been an active participant in the UIUC SoyFACE research group and is a valued collaborator, as demonstrated by his coauthorship on several publications. He has also been an active member of the Plant Biology Association of Graduate Students. Justin wants to continue research on climate change, with the goal of defining how crop plants respond and ultimately using that knowledge to improve crop productivity and quality.

Justin Walley

Justin Walley is a PhD student in plant biology at the University of California, Davis, in the laboratory of Katie Dehesh. His research focuses on plant responses to stress and he ultimately hopes to identify genes that can be manipulated to confer broad-spectrum stress tolerance in crop plants. Justin performed microarray experiments to characterize changes in the Arabidopsis transcriptome after 5 minutes of wounding. He then compared his data with those from microarray studies done on other stress treatments and determined that there was a significant overlap between transcripts showing a rapid wound response (RWR) and transcripts altered by other stress treatments. Justin identified a cis-regulatory element in the promoters of RWR genes and showed that this motif is sufficient to confer a response to many diverse biotic and abiotic stresses. His research has also revealed a role for chromatin remodeling and mRNA turnover in the plant stress response. Justin’s research has resulted in first-author publications in PLoS Pathogens and PLoS Genetics, and he also contributed to a publication in Plant Physiology. He is now beginning to move his research into crop plants. Justin has been an active member of the Plant Biology Graduate Group at UC Davis—he served as president of its Graduate Student Association, as graduate student recruitment organizer, and as a representative on faculty search and seminar committees. Justin hopes to continue his career in plant-stress research either in academia or in the private sector.

Steven E. Jacobsen

Steve Jacobsen is this year’s recipient of the Charles A. Shull Award for his pioneering research in critical areas of plant genetics, development, cell biology, and biochemistry. As a graduate student, Steve investigated the role of gibberellins in flower development and cloned SPINDLY, which encodes an O-linked N-acetylglucosamine transferase that negatively regulates gibberellin signaling. This was a key discovery that laid the foundation for much of the current work in this area. Steve then moved into the field of DNA methylation and epigenetic regulation of gene expression as a postdoctoral fellow in the Meyerowitz laboratory. There he studied mutations that affect the Arabidopsis flower development gene SUPERMAN. The CLARK KENT mutation he identified was relatively stable, but not stable enough for fine mapping, and as a result, traditional approaches for identifying the gene involved were not suitable. Steve’s acute observations of the unusual nature of the mutation led him to show that the CLARK KENT mutations were epigenetic variants of the SUPERMAN gene that were inactivated by hypermethylation. As a result of this pioneering work, other epialleles of other genes were also identified. Steve started his own lab at UCLA in 1998, and there went on to discover and characterize other genes involved in methylation of DNA and histones, including CHROMOMETHYLASE3 and KRYPTONITE. His group also discovered that ARGONAUTE4, which was known to play a role in RNA interference, was involved with small RNAs to target specific genes for methylation. In short, Steve and his colleagues have developed many of the tools required to study epigenetic regulation and have used them to uncover many aspects of the complex interactions among DNA methylation, histone modification, and siRNA function in Arabidopsis. In large part as a result of Steve’s work, the field of epigenetics is exploding and plants have been at center stage. In addition to research, Steve is also very active in teaching and mentoring as well as service to the scientific community through production of genetic resources and service on many editorial boards, grant panels, and committees.

Murray Ronald Badger

Murray Ronald Badger is a professor at the Australian National University and has been one of the most influential scientists in the field of photosynthesis for over 30 years. His work spans several disciplines in plant biology including biochemistry, physiology, molecular biology, and genomics. In addition, Murray has worked on a broad array of organisms and ecosystems, ranging from cyanobacteria to higher plants and from marine systems to deserts. He has also authored or coauthored a number of classic papers. Murray’s earliest work focused on Rubisco and its in vivo activation. In a series of elegant studies spanning 25 years, Murray and his collaborators have provided insight into how cyanobacteria take up bicarbonate and convert it to CO2 in the carboxysome. More recently Murray has applied both bioinformatics and genomics to his studies and is well known for the development of mass spectrometric approaches to measuring gas fluxes in plants.

Murray received his undergraduate degree from Sydney University and his PhD from the Australian National University. He was a CSIRO postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution of Washington at Stanford University. He has also served as a visiting fellow at the Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany, and the Department of Plant Physiology, University of Umeå, Umeå, Sweden. He is a professor at the Australian National University and head of the Molecular Plant Physiology Group, deputy director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, and coordinator of the Plant Sciences Research Theme at the Australian National University.

In addition to his contributions to the photosynthesis field, Murray has contributed greatly to the infrastructure of plant science by hosting scientific meetings, refereeing manuscripts and proposals, and collaborating with scientists from around the world. He has hosted a large number of scientists in his laboratory over the years. In the past 30 years, Murray has hosted an estimated 20 visiting scientists, helping make Canberra a “Mecca” for plant scientists. Besides reviewing for a large number of journals, Murray has also been on the editorial boards of Photosynthesis Research and Functional Plant Biology. While considered by all a distinguished “senior” member of the scientific community, Murray remains friendly and accessible to younger scientists. He often provides excellent ideas for future research approaches, no doubt helping many scientists with their work over the years.

William J. Davies

William J. Davies has been a faculty member at the University of Lancaster, U.K., for more than 30 years. He is a leading authority on chemical communication between roots and shoots. It has long been recognized that plant growth regulators produced in roots influence the growth of shoots, and mutants of root-synthesized regulators such as ABA or cytokinins clearly influence stomatal behavior and shoot growth. Bill has demonstrated the action of these hormones in the whole plant under natural conditions. He has manipulated root conditions without altering shoot conditions and shown that stomatal behavior and leaf growth change, consistent with root to shoot signaling. This basic research has practical applications that are being adopted in agriculture with global impacts.

Bill received his BS in horticultural science from Reading University in 1970 and his PhD in forestry and botany from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1974. He completed postdoctoral research at Duke University before joining the faculty at the University of Lancaster. Much of his research was accomplished while he served as director of the Environment Centre at the University of Lancaster and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Experimental Botany. During these years, numerous scientists have visited his lab and institution and many students have been trained. During his tenure at the Journal of Experimental Botany, Bill arranged for the journal to host symposia at annual meetings of the Society for Experimental Biology and to support other international symposia. Bill is an excellent lecturer revered by his students and colleagues, with whom he continues to publish widely.

Jorge Dubcovsky

Jorge Dubcovsky is recognized for his pioneering work on the genetics and physiology of vernalization responses in temperate cereals, his contribution to the advancement of cereal genomics, and the deployment of cereal genomics in wheat breeding. By focusing his research on wheat, Jorge’s accomplishments impact one of the most important human food sources and advance human welfare on the global scale. His lab isolated and characterized a number of important wheat genes, including genes involved in vernalization, frost tolerance, high grain protein content, and recently, a slow rusting resistance gene.

A central theme of Jorge’s research is the regulation of flowering in temperate cereals. His group demonstrated molecular communication between the vernalization and photoperiod pathways and discovered the existence of a complex feedback regulatory loop that contributes to the irreversible initiation of reproductive development in wheat. Another key advance by Jorge’s team was the cloning of the GPC1 QTL (for Grain Protein Content) from wheat. Transgenic lines with reduced transcripts of this gene mature several weeks later than the control plants and had 30 percent less grain protein, zinc, and iron than the non-transgenic controls. Interestingly, almost all commercial pasta and bread wheat varieties have a non-functional copy of GPC-B1, suggesting that this gene was lost during wheat domestication. Therefore, the reintroduction of the functional gene from the wild species into commercial wheat varieties has the potential to increase grain protein and micronutrient contents significantly. The first varieties including GPC-B1 are being released.

John Ohlrogge

John’s research program is focused primarily on understanding fatty acid metabolism in plant cells. He attached many fundamental problems such as determining the biochemical pathways that lead to the synthesis of common and unusual fatty acids in plants and dissecting the regulatory mechanisms controlling these pathways. He elucidated some of the mechanisms by which fatty acids are incorporated into membrane lipids or sequestered in oil bodies in seeds. More recently, he has also turned his attention to understanding the metabolism of waxes and long chain fatty acids found in the cuticle on the outer surfaces of the plant. In addition, he has maintained a long-standing interest in applying new information derived from his research to practical purposes. For example, he has worked toward creating plants that make different oils that are more beneficial to human health or that are better suited to fuel our vehicles or that can serve as the starting materials for making chemicals currently produced from petroleum.

In addition to his outstanding research program, John is known as an exemplary citizen and mentor of graduate students and postdoctoral associates who have gone on to have their own successful careers. He has a reputation for creating a vibrant laboratory research setting that makes graduate and postgraduate study an enjoyable and stimulating experience. Among many exemplary leadership activities in the scientific community, John helped found and initially directed the National Plant Lipid Cooperative that advances research on plant lipids by improving interaction and communication between scientists in this field.

Jeffery Dangl

Jeff has played a key role in developing the concepts and elucidating the fundamental mechanisms that govern plant–pathogen interactions. In doing so, he has displayed a rare combination of intellectual leadership and scientific acumen. Jeffery initiated his studies on the plant immune system while a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Cologne, Germany, bringing to bear his knowledge of mammalian immunology acquired while a PhD student at Stanford University. He continues these studies today in his position as the John N. Couch Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Jeffery has mentored numerous scientists, served on national scientific panels and editorial boards, and acted as an effective proponent for plant research initiatives worldwide. He was elected a member of the National Academy of
Sciences in 2007.

Jeffery’s work was pivotal in the development of Arabidopsis as a model system in which to study the plant immune responses. As part of his initial studies, he characterized the genetic interaction between Arabidopsis and Pseudomonas bacteria, demonstrating that these displayed the same well-known gene-for-gene relationship found in crop immune responses to pathogens. These genetic studies led to his identification of resistance (R) genes in Arabidopsis, the impact of this work spreading far beyond Arabidopsis, beyond even crop plants, for similar genes were later found to regulate human innate immunity.

Subsequently, Jeffery was instrumental in developing the “Guard Hypothesis” to explain the ability of plant R proteins to protect against pathogens, a protective mechanism that need not require direct interaction between the R protein and the pathogen protein. Instead, many R proteins monitor the integrity of cellular proteins targeted by the pathogens. Jeffery’s work is not restricted to the plant side of this molecular arms race, and he has recently been on the front line in the development of genomic approaches to identify the repertoire of pathogen effector molecules.

Siobhán Brady

Siobhán, an assistant professor at the University of California Genome Center and Section of Plant Biology, is recognized as “a rising star in the area of plant systems biological research” and as having “a rare combination” of qualities “that truly deserves to be recognized.” Siobhán obtained her PhD working with Professor Peter McCourt at the University of Toronto, Canada, on abscisic acid signaling. Not only had she mastered a strong background in hormone signaling during this early period of her training, she was also quick to realize the power of systems biology in the dissection of regulatory networks in Arabidopsis. It was at the University of Toronto that Siobhán made significant contribution in the bioinformatics of cis-element identification for tissue-specific transcriptional regulatory networks in Arabidopsis. She was awarded a prestigious and highly competitive postdoctoral fellowship from the Canadian government. In her postdoctoral work in Professor Philip Benfey’s laboratory at Duke University, Siobhán took on what her mentor referred to as “the greatest challenge” in determining the expression profiles of all the cell types in the root. She examined individual roots so as to achieve profiling of all the developmental stages along the longitudinal axis of the root. For this work, she had to develop new software tools to accomplish analysis of data along both the radial and longitudinal axes of the root. It is her ability to identify and work with the right people that further distinguishes her accomplishments from those of her peers. The result is a seminal paper in Science that revealed a high-resolution spatiotemporal expression map for root development. Dr. Benfey referred to Siobhán as “fearless” in adopting new techniques and as “a leader in scientific discussions and in lab organization.” Siobhán had mentored many younger students in the Benfey laboratory. In addition, she also took on a leadership role in running a Duke summer undergraduate research program that had a combined focus on mathematical modeling and biology. She was recognized by Duke University and named “Outstanding Postdoc” in 2007.