ROCKVILLE, Md. -- The American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2011 awards, honoring excellence in research, education, outreach, and service.
Stephen Hales Prize
Susan Wessler, University of California, Riverside
Established in 1927, the Stephen Hales Prize is one of our Society's oldest and most prestigious awards honoring exceptional research accomplishments and service to ASPB. Wessler is honored for her groundbreaking contributions to the field of transposon biology. She was the first to show that transposons can function as introns and that aberrant transposition events can lead to chromosome breakage and rearrangements. Wessler discovered miniature inverted repeat transposable elements (MITES) and PACK-MULE transposons in rice, which play important roles in gene shuffling and duplications and potentially produce genes with new functions. The recipient of the Hales Prize delivers a lecture at the following year's ASPB annual meeting, so Wessler will speak at Plant Biology 2012 in Austin, Texas.
Charles Reid Barnes Life Membership Award
Peter K. Helper, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Established in 1925, the Charles Reid Barnes Life Membership Awards is ASPB's oldest award, honoring lifelong service in plant biology. Helper is recognized for his exceptional contributions to our knowledge of the structure and dynamics of the cytoskeleton. His numerous contributions include providing the first evidence of the interaction between microtubules and cellulose deposition, establishing the cross-bridging between microtubules and the mitotic spindle, and demonstrating the connection between pulsed Ca2+ signaling and tip growth of pollen of tubes.
Charles Albert Shull Award
Sean Cutler, University of California, Riverside
Created in 1971, the Charles Albert Shull Award recognizes young researchers for outstanding contributions to plant biology in mid-career. Cutler is honored for his contributions to our understanding of abscisic acid signaling in Arabidopsis and in particular his work on the ERA1 gene, which is considered a landmark study in hormone signaling. Pioneering a chemical genetics approach, his discoveries produced an extensive community-accessible library of small molecules that show biological actions toward plants and other organisms. The recipient of the Shull Award delivers a lecture at the following year's ASPB annual meeting, so Cutler will speak at Plant Biology 2012 in Austin, Texas.
Martin Gibbs Medal
Steve A. Kay, University of California, San Diego
The Martin Gibbs Medal, established in 1993, honors an individual who has pioneered advances that have served to establish new directions of investigation in the plant sciences. Kay is honored for his development of luciferase reporter and imaging techniques to establish an understanding of the mechanism and regulation of biological clocks. Incorporation of biochemical techniques and genomics approaches into his program provided the means to understand entrainment of the clock by light and other regulatory inputs, as well as the mechanisms that compensate for temperature and other environmental changes. Kay will convene the Martin Gibbs Medal Symposium at Plant Biology 2012.
Excellence in Education Award
Mary Williams, Features Editor, The Plant Cell, American Society of Plant Biologists
The Excellence in Education Award recognizes outstanding, teaching, mentoring, and educational outreach in plant biology. Prior to joining ASPB's staff, Williams served on the faculty at Harvey Mudd College for 14 years. She served as a member and chair of the Education Committee where she raised the profile of ASPB outreach efforts through dedicated mini-symposia, poster sessions, and workshops at the annual Plant Biology meeting. She has written numerous education articles for the ASPB News, coordinated the meeting of the Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUI) group, and generated inquiry-based activities to illustrate the "12 Principles of Plant Biology"; these activities are now publicly available for middle school and high school teachers around the country.
Early Career Award
Ravi Maruthachalam, University of California, Davis
The Early Career Award was instituted in 2005 to recognize outstanding research by scientists at the beginning of their career. Maruthachalam is recognized for his contributions in plant reproductive biology. He first demonstrated that alteration of a single gene brings about functional apomeiosis, a major component of apomixis. He continues to make fundamental discoveries on centromere function and synthetic clonal reproduction through seeds.
Eric E. Conn Young Investigator Award
Hiroshi Maeda, Purdue University
The Eric E. Conn Young Investigator Award—presented for the first time in 2011—recognizes excellence in outreach, public service, mentoring, or teaching by plant scientists at the beginning of their career. Maeda is honored for his outstanding research in plant stress physiology and aromatic amino acid biosynthesis as well as significant contributions to service, outreach, and mentoring.
Fellow of ASPB Award
Bonnie Bartel, Rice University
Gerald Edwards, Washington State University
Sheila McCormick, USDA Agricultural Research Service and University of California, Berkeley
Katherine Osteryoung, Michigan State University
Linda Walling, University of California, Riverside
Established in 2007, the Fellow of ASPB Award is granted in recognition of distinguished and long-term contributions to plant biology and service to the Society by current members in areas that include research, education, mentoring, outreach, and professional and public service. This prestigious honor may be granted to no more than 0.2% of the current membership each year.
ASPB–Pioneer Hi-Bred Graduate Student Fellowship
Jacqueline Benson, Cornell University
The ASPB–Pioneer Hi-Bred Graduate Student Fellowship is made possible by the generosity of Pioneer Hi-Bred International and recognizes and encourages innovative graduate research in areas of plant biology that relate to important commodity crops. Benson is a plant breeding and genetics doctoral student in the laboratory of Rebecca Nelson. Her research focuses on understanding resistance to gray leaf spot disease in maize, a devastating disease that causes widespread yield losses in the United States and Africa.
Corresponding Membership Award Nominees
Carlos Andreo, Centro de Estudios Fotosintéticos y Bioquímicos (Argentina)
Jiayang Li, Chinese Academy of Sciences (China)
First given in 1932, the Corresponding Membership Award honors up to three distinguished plant biologists residing outside the United States with life membership. Andreo and Li have been nominated for the Corresponding Membership Award. Corresponding Members are elected by the ASPB membership, so these nominees' names have been placed on the 2011 Election Ballot.
ASPB Leadership in Science Public Service Award
Deborah Delmer, University of California, Davis (retired)
The ASPB Public Affairs Committee awards the ASPB Leadership in Science Public Service Award annually to recognize individuals who have advanced the mission of ASPB and its members through significant contributions to plant science and public policy leadership. Awardees generally have made contributions to the broader society that are relevant to the work of plant biologists, but recipients need not be plant scientists themselves. A former president of ASPB, Delmer is recognized for a career that includes groundbreaking research in cellulose biosynthesis, as well as leadership in plant science, food security, and related areas for the National Science Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She will speak as part of the awards symposium at Plant Biology 2011 this August.
These awards will be formally presented during the opening session of Plant Biology 2011, ASPB's annual meeting, which will be held August 6 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
ASPB is a professional scientific society, headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, devoted to the advancement of the plant sciences worldwide. With a membership of nearly 5,000 plant scientists from throughout the United States and more than 50 other nations, the Society publishes two of the most widely cited plant science journals: The Plant Cell and Plant Physiology. For more information about ASPB, please visit http://www.aspb.org/. Also follow ASPB on Facebook at facebook.com/myASPB and on Twitter @ASPB.