Scientific Advisory Board
The Plant Resilience Institute (PRI) has an external Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), comprised of recognized, interdisciplinary plant science leaders knowledgeable about plant resilience and associated challenges to agriculture. The SAB regularly assesses PRI's research programs, including progress and impact, and provides guidance to PRI leadership. Learn more about each SAB member below.
Anne W. Sylvester is the director of research at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL). Her role is to oversee the research enterprise through short and long-term strategic planning. The position includes facilitating the success of resident and visiting research programs and research support services, guiding research partnerships, identifying funding opportunities, and coordinating research efforts that align with the MBL’s scientific vision.
Sylvester previously served as a program director at the National Science Foundation in the Directorate of Biological Sciences after a research and teaching career at the University of Wyoming where she directed a program in maize development genetics and genomics. Sylvester has been active nationally in service to the maize genetics community as a member of the Maize Genome Sequencing Advisory Board, was elected to the Maize Genetics Executive Committee, and has long promoted collaborative research initiatives that develop and distribute genomic resources. Sylvester was appointed as a director in the University of Wyoming Office of Research to develop a collaborative research and education center. In this role, she contributed to strategic visioning, funding, and implementation of a new statewide center focused on environmental hydrology and geophysics.
Sylvester received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington where she conducted graduate research at the UW Friday Harbor Marine Laboratory. Sylvester received postdoctoral fellowships in plant developmental biology at Stanford University and in maize developmental genetics at the University of California-Berkeley.
Joy Bergelson is the executive vice president of the Simons Foundation’s Life Sciences Division and the Silver Professor in the Department of Biology at New York University. Her laboratory is best known for dispelling the long-held belief that arms race dynamics typify the evolution of plant resistance to microbial pathogens in nature. An early researcher in the ecology and evolution of Arabidopsis thaliana, Bergelson’s group introduced the use of genetically manipulated plants to disentangle mechanisms driving evolutionary dynamics and helped forge research at the interface of ecological and evolutionary genetics.
Bergelson holds a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, an M.Phil. from the University of York in England, and a B.Sc. from Brown University. Before joining NYU, Bergelson was the James D. Watson Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, where she chaired the Department of Ecology and Evolution.
She was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2018 and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Richard A. Dixon is a Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at the University of North Texas Department of Biological Sciences. A world-renowned specialist in the metabolic engineering of plants, Dixon is best known for his research on the biochemistry, molecular biology, and metabolic engineering of natural product pathways in plants and their implications for agriculture and human health. He has been named by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the 10 most cited authors in the plant and animal sciences.
In the United Kingdom, Dixon earned a doctorate in botany from the University of Oxford and received postdoctoral training in plant biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. In 2004, the University of Oxford awarded him the Doctor of Science degree for his research achievements. Before joining the University of North Texas, Dixon was a Distinguished Professor and holder of the Samuel Roberts Noble Research Chair, as well as senior vice president and founding director of the Plant Biology Division at the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, where he worked from 1988-2013.
Dixon was elected a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2007. He is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Inventors, and American Society of Plant Biologists.
Mary Lou Guerinot is a Ronald and Deborah Harris Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Dartmouth College. Guerinot is a molecular geneticist recognized for her work on iron homeostasis in plants, and her lab researches key genes and their partners that regulate metal uptake, transport, and metabolism.
Guerinot earned her Ph.D. in biology from Dalhousie University, followed by postdoctoral studies at the University of Maryland and the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory.
At Dartmouth, she has served as Department of Biological Sciences Chair, Faculty for the Sciences Associate Dean, and Vice Provost. She has also served as a member of the Advisory Committee for Biological Sciences at the National Science Foundation and former president and chair of the Board of Trustees of the American Society of Plant Biologists.
Guerinot was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2016 and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society of Plant Biologists.
Jan Leach is a plant pathologist who studies the molecular basis of plant disease susceptibility and resistance and how these responses are influenced by interactions within the phytobiome. She is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Agricultural Biology at Colorado State University.
Leach received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and completed postdoctoral studies at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany at East Malling.
Leach is the Immediate Past President of the International Society of Plant Pathology and is a Fellow and a past President of the American Phytopathological Society (APS). She served on the APS Public Policy Board for 16 years, leading advocacy efforts such as the Phytobiomes Initiative, a systems-level approach to improving crop productivity. In 2020, she was presented the APS Award of Distinction.
Leach is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology. She was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
Corné Pieterse is a Distinguished Professor of the Faculty of Science, Chair of the Plant-Microbe Interactions group, and Scientific Director of the Institute of Environmental Biology at Utrecht University. His research group investigates how the plant immune system protects plants against microbial pathogens and insect herbivores and how beneficial microbes in the plant root microbiome stimulate plant growth and immunity.
Pieterse earned his Ph.D. at the Wageningen University & Research Centre in molecular phytopathology before moving to the University of Utrecht as a postdoctoral researcher.
He is one of the founders of the Netherlands Plant-Ecophenotyping Centre (NPEC), an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization. Pieterse has also been listed as a Highly Cited Researcher (top 1%).
Nathan Springer is the Crop Genome Editing Lead at Bayer Crop Sciences where he is involved in developing strategy to utilize genomic tools to improve plant breeding processes. He has worked across functions at Bayer to develop a genome editing pipeline since 2022.
Prior to joining Bayer, Springer led a maize genetics and genomics research group at the University of Minnesota for nearly 20 years. This research group made contributions to our understanding of maize genome structure, epigenome dynamics, heterosis, gene expression variation, and transposon biology.
Springer received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison working on functional genomics of maize chromatin.
