Foxtail millet, scientific name Setaria italica, is an annual grass grown for human food. It is the second-most widely planted species of millet, and the most grown millet species in Asia. The oldest evidence of foxtail millet cultivation was found along the ancient course of the Yellow River in Cishan, China, carbon dated to be from around 8,000 years before present. Foxtail millet has also been grown in India since antiquity.
Susan Randi Wessler, ForMemRS, is an American plant molecular biologist and geneticist. She is Distinguished Professor of Genetics at the University of California, Riverside (UCR).
Jeffrey Lynn Bennetzen is an American geneticist on the faculty of the University of Georgia (UGA). Bennetzen is known for his work describing codon usage bias in yeast, being the first to clone and sequence an active transposon in maize, and developing and proposing along with Michael Freeling the model of the grasses as a single genetic system. He is one of two authors, with Sarah Hake of the book "Handbook of Maize." Bennetzen was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2004.
Joachim Wilhelm "Jo" Messing was a German-American biologist who was a professor of molecular biology and the fourth director of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University.
Plant genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity specifically in plants. It is generally considered a field of biology and botany, but intersects frequently with many other life sciences and is strongly linked with the study of information systems. Plant genetics is similar in many ways to animal genetics but differs in a few key areas.
Rajeev Kumar Varshney is an Indian agricultural scientist, specializing in genomics, genetics, molecular breeding and capacity building in developing countries. Varshney is currently serving as Director, Western Australian State Agricultural Biotechnology Center; Director, Centre for Crop & Food Innovation; and International Chair in Agriculture & Food Security with the Food Futures Institute at Murdoch University, Australia since Feb 2022. Before joining Murdoch University, Australia he served International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), a global agriculture R&D institute, for more than 16 years in different scientific and research leadership roles including Research Program Director for three global research programs– Grain Legumes, Genetic Gains and Accelerated Crop Improvement Program. He has the onus of establishing and nurturing the Center of Excellence in Genomics & Systems Biology (CEGSB), a globally recognized center for genomics research at ICRISAT that made impacts on improving agriculture and development of human resources in several countries including India, China, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, etc. Varshney holds Adjunct/Honorary/Visiting Professor positions at 10 academic institutions in Australia, China, Ghana, Hong Kong and India, including The University of Western Australia, University of Queensland, West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement, University of Hyderabad, Chaudhary Charan Singh University and Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University.
Catherine Rosemary Martin is a Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and project leader at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, co-ordinating research into the relationship between diet and health and how crops can be fortified to improve diets and address escalating chronic disease globally.
Mary Ann Moran is a distinguished research professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia in Athens. She studies the role of bacteria in Earth's marine nutrient cycles, and is a leader in the fields of marine sciences and biogeochemistry. Her work is focused on how microbes interact with dissolved organic matter and the impact of microbial diversity on the global carbon and sulfur cycles. By defining the roles of diverse bacteria in the carbon and sulfur cycles, she connects the biogeochemical and organismal approaches in marine science.
Zengjian Jeffrey Chen is a plant biologist and molecular geneticist, currently the D. J. Sibley Centennial Professor of Plant Molecular Genetics at University of Texas at Austin. Chen received his B.S. at Zhejiang Agricultural University, M.S. at Nanjing Agricultural University, and Ph.D. in Genetics at Texas A&M University. Following a postdoctoral position at University of Minnesota and as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, he joined the faculty at Texas A&M in 1999, where he was promoted to the rank of associate professor with tenure. In 2005, he moved to The University of Texas at Austin and became a full professor in 2008 in the lllDepartments of lllMolecular lllBiosciences and lllIntegrative lllBiology, Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, and Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology.
Manoj Prasad is an Indian plant geneticist, molecular biologist and working as a Senior Scientist and JC Bose National Fellow at the National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR). Known for his research on the stress biology of plants and virology, he is an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, the National Academy of Sciences, India, the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Indian Virological Society and was a recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences, in 2014.
Jessica Kissinger is a Distinguished Research Professor at the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, University of Georgia and director of the Institute of Bioinformatics. Her research focus is on the evolution, assembly and data curation of protozoan parasite genomes, particularly Cryptosporidium, Toxoplasma gondii and Plasmodium.
Amanda M. Hulse-Kemp is a computational biologist with the United States Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service. She works in the Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Unit and is stationed on the North Carolina State University campus in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Stephen Kresovich is a plant geneticist and the Coker Endowed Chair of Genetics in the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at Clemson University and professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University. Since 2019 he has served as director of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement.
Amy Olymbia Charkowski is an American plant pathologist and Professor of Plant Pathology at Colorado State University. She was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2020.
Marisa Bartolomei is an American cell biologist, the Perelman Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology and Co-Director of the Epigenetics Institute at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research considers epigenetic processes including genomic imprinting. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
Anita Hopper is an American molecular geneticist who is a professor at the Ohio State University. She studies the mechanisms of distribution of RNA between the nucleus and cytoplasm. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
Ellen V. Rothenberg is an American biologist who is a Distinguished Professor at the California Institute of Technology. She investigates the molecular mechanisms that underpin lineage choice. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
Paula McSteen is a scientist known for her research on plant genetics. In 2020 she was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Tara Matise is an American geneticist at Rutgers University. Since 2018, she has served as chair of the Department of Genetics. Her research interests span computational genetics, data science, and human genetics. She is co-director of the Rutgers University Genetics Coordinating Center.
Theresa Marie Koehler is an American microbiologist who is the Herbert L. and Margaret W. DuPont Distinguished Professor in Biomedical Sciences and Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at McGovern Medical School. She is known for her extensive research on anthrax and was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2021.
