Barbara McClintock was an American scientist and cytogeneticist who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. McClintock received her PhD in botany from Cornell University in 1927. There she started her career as the leader in the development of maize cytogenetics, the focus of her research for the rest of her life. From the late 1920s, McClintock studied chromosomes and how they change during reproduction in maize. She developed the technique for visualizing Maize chromosomes and used microscopic analysis to demonstrate many fundamental genetic ideas. One of those ideas was the notion of genetic recombination by crossing-over during meiosis—a mechanism by which chromosomes exchange information. She produced the first genetic map for maize, linking regions of the chromosome to physical traits. She demonstrated the role of the telomere and centromere, regions of the chromosome that are important in the conservation of genetic information. She was recognized as among the best in the field, awarded prestigious fellowships, and elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1944.
Oryza sativa, commonly known as Asian rice, is the plant species most commonly referred to in English as rice. It is the type of farmed rice whose cultivars are most common globally, and was first domesticated in the Yangtze River basin in China 13,500 to 8,200 years ago.
William Ball Provine was an American historian of science and of evolutionary biology and population genetics. He was the Andrew H. and James S. Tisch Distinguished University Professor at Cornell University and was a professor in the Departments of History, Science and Technology Studies, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Deborah Charlesworth is a population geneticist from the UK, notable for her important discoveries in population genetics and evolutionary biology. Her most notable research is in understanding the evolution of recombination, sex chromosomes and mating system for plants.
Steven Dale Tanksley is the Chief Technology Officer of Nature Source Improved Plants. Prior to founding Nature Source Improved Plants, Tanksley served as the Liberty Hyde Bailey professor of plant breeding and biometry and chair of the Genomics Initiative Task Force at Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He is currently a Professor Emeritus at Cornell University.
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).
A crop wild relative (CWR) is a wild plant closely related to a domesticated plant. It may be a wild ancestor of the domesticated (cultivated) plant, or another closely related taxon.
Scott D. Emr is an American cell biologist and the founding and current Director of the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology at Cornell University, where he is also a Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of 1956 Professor at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics.
Pamela C. Ronald is an American plant pathologist and geneticist. She is a professor in the Genome Center and the Department of Plant Pathology, and founding director of the Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy (IFAL), at the University of California, Davis. She also serves as Key Scientist at the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, California. In 2018 she served as a visiting professor at Stanford University in the Center on Food Security and the Environment.
The Biffen Lecture is a lectureship organised by the John Innes Centre, named after Rowland Biffen.
Usha Vijayraghavan is on the faculty of the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. Her major research interests are Molecular Genetics, Plant Development.
Bhyravabhotla Radhakrishna Murty (1928–2003) was an Indian botanist, known for his contributions the fields of Conservation genetics and Radiation genetics. He was a professor of Biochemistry Division at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa and was an elected fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1973, for his contributions to biological sciences.
Mariana Federica Wolfner is the Goldwin Smith Professor of molecular biology and genetics at Cornell University. Her research investigates sexual conflict in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2019 in recognition of her distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
Alison G. Power is an American biologist. She is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Her research investigates disease ecology in plant communities, both natural and agricultural, across the U.S., Central America, Southeast Asia, and Africa.
Kelly Zamudio is the Doherty Chair in Molecular Biology in the Department of Integrative Biology at University of Texas Austin. She was formerly the Goldwin Smith Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University and Curator of Herpetology at the Cornell Museum of Vertebrates.
Molly Jahn is an American plant geneticist and breeder and Professor of Agronomy at University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. She was Under Secretary of Research, Education and Economics in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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.
Maureen Hanson is an American molecular biologist and Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She is a joint member of the Section of Plant Biology and Director of the Center for Enervating Neuroimmune Disease. Her research concerns gene expression in chloroplasts and mitochondria, photosynthesis, and the molecular basis of the disease Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS).
Ruth E. Ley is a British-American microbial ecologist. Ley was an associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell University until 2018. She is currently serving as the director of the Microbiome Science Department at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology.
Sarah Davidson Evanega is an American researcher who works in plant sciences, a public policy influencer and a science communicator, especially relating to agricultural biotechnology. She is a professor at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research (BTI), and an adjunct professor in the School of Integrative Plant Sciences, Cornell University. She is the director of the Alliance for Science and was awarded the 2021 Borlaug CAST Communication Award.
