Dale Sanders, FRS is a director of the John Innes Centre, an internationally leading institute for research in plant sciences and microbiology in Norwich, England.
Mathai Varghese is a mathematician at the University of Adelaide. His first most influential contribution is the Mathai–Quillen formalism, which he formulated together with Daniel Quillen, and which has since found applications in index theory and topological quantum field theory. He was appointed a full professor in 2006. He was appointed Director of the Institute for Geometry and its Applications in 2009. In 2011, he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. In 2013, he was appointed the Elder Professor of Mathematics at the University of Adelaide, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Australia. In 2017, he was awarded an ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship. In 2021, he was awarded the prestigious Hannan Medal and Lecture from the Australian Academy of Science, recognizing an outstanding career in Mathematics.
The Australian Research Council (ARC) is the primary non-medical research funding agency of the Australian Government, distributing more than A$800 million in grants each year. The Council was established by the Australian Research Council Act 2001, and provides competitive research funding to academics and researchers at Australian universities. Most health and medical research in Australia is funded by the more specialised National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), which operates under a separate budget.
The rhizosphere is the narrow region of soil or substrate that is directly influenced by root secretions and associated soil microorganisms known as the root microbiome. The rhizosphere involving the soil pores contains many bacteria and other microorganisms that feed on sloughed-off plant cells, termed rhizodeposition, and the proteins and sugars released by roots, termed root exudates. This symbiosis leads to more complex interactions, influencing plant growth and competition for resources. Much of the nutrient cycling and disease suppression by antibiotics required by plants, occurs immediately adjacent to roots due to root exudates and metabolic products of symbiotic and pathogenic communities of microorganisms. The rhizosphere also provides space to produce allelochemicals to control neighbours and relatives.
Hugh Phillip Possingham, FAA, is Chief Scientist of The Nature Conservancy, best known for his work in conservation biology. He is also an ARC Laureate Fellow in the Department of Mathematics and the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Queensland.
An epicormic shoot is a shoot growing from an epicormic bud, which lies underneath the bark of a trunk, stem, or branch of a plant.
Peter Michael Waterhouse is a British-Australian plant virologist and geneticist. He is a professor at the Queensland University of Technology.
Pierdomenico Perata is an Italian physiologist whose activities are focused on plant physiology and plant biology. Since 8 May 2013 he has been the rector of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna.
Professor Jennifer Louise "Jenny" Martin is an Australian scientist, academic, and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Wollongong, in New South Wales. She is a former Director of the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery at Griffith University. and a former Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland. Her research expertise lies in the areas of structural biology, protein crystallography, protein interactions and their applications in drug design and discovery.
Michelle Louise Coote FRSC FAA is an Australian polymer chemist. She has published extensively in the fields of polymer chemistry, radical chemistry and computational quantum chemistry. She is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA).
Christine Helen Foyer is professor of plant science at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK. She is President Elect of the Association of Applied Biologists, the General Secretary of the Federation of European Societies of Plant Biologists, an elected Board Member of the American Society of Plant Biologists and a Member of the French Academy of Agriculture. She has published and co-authored many papers on related subjects.
Steven M. Smith is Professor of Plant Genetics and Biochemistry at the University of Tasmania in Australia, and Visiting Professor in the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Beijing, China.
The Phytobiome is a term that relates to a plant (phyto) in a specific ecological area (biome). It includes the plant itself, the environment and all micro- and macro-organisms living in, on, or around the plant. These organisms include bacteria, archaea, fungi, protists, insects, animals and other plants. The environment includes the soil, air and climate. Examples of ecological areas are fields, rangelands, forests. Knowledge of the interactions within a phytobiome can be used to create tools for agriculture, crop management, increased health, preservation, productivity, and sustainability of cropping and forest systems.
Strigolactones are a group of chemical compounds produced by a plant's roots. Due to their mechanism of action, these molecules have been classified as plant hormones or phytohormones. So far, strigolactones have been identified to be responsible for three different physiological processes: First, they promote the germination of parasitic organisms that grow in the host plant's roots, such as Strigalutea and other plants of the genus Striga. Second, strigolactones are fundamental for the recognition of the plant by symbiotic fungi, especially arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, because they establish a mutualistic association with these plants, and provide phosphate and other soil nutrients. Third, strigolactones have been identified as branching inhibition hormones in plants; when present, these compounds prevent excess bud growing in stem terminals, stopping the branching mechanism in plants.
Nicholas Justin Marshall is a British-Australian neuroscientist-ecologist whose research focuses on decoding how animals use color to communicate. He is known for discovering the most complex animal visual system known of any organism. – that of the mantis shrimp, which has 12 color channels.
The Australian Laureate Fellowship is an Australian professorial research fellowship awarded by the Australian Research Council. Up to 17 fellows are chosen each year for five-year awards.
Peter Martin Visscher is a Dutch-born Australian geneticist who is professor and chair of Quantitative Genetics at the University of Queensland. He is also a professorial research fellow at the University of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience and an affiliate professor at their Queensland Brain Institute.
Christopher Barner-Kowollik FAA, FRSC, FRACI is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellow, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Vice-President of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and professor within the School of Chemistry and Physics at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) journal Polymer Chemistry, a principal investigator within the Soft Matter Materials Laboratory at QUT and associate research group leader at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
Lianzhou Wang is a Chinese Australian materials scientist and professor in the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Queensland. He is director of the Nanomaterials Centre (Nanomac) and a senior group member at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland, as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
The plant microbiome, also known as the phytomicrobiome, plays roles in plant health and productivity and has received significant attention in recent years. The microbiome has been defined as "a characteristic microbial community occupying a reasonably well-defined habitat which has distinct physio-chemical properties. The term thus not only refers to the microorganisms involved but also encompasses their theatre of activity".
