Announcing the ICAR 2027 Keynote Speakers
Cyril Zipfel: The Zipfel lab are interested in how plants perceive their environment and respond appropriately to coordinate their growth and development in the face of external challenges. In particular, they are focusing on cell surface-localised immune receptors – pattern recognition receptors – that perceive microbe-derived or endogenous patterns to activate innate immune responses.
Adrienne Roeder: The Roeder group studies cell size and organ size with the objective to identify key cellular players and processes that enable plants to sense its size at a cellular and organ level and determine when to stop growing, and how to modulate growth rate. Their research falls at the intersection of cell biology and developmental biology focusing on two questions: how are variable cell sizes produced during development and how do reproducible organ sizes and shapes emerge from the variable growth of their cells?
Doris Wagner: The Wagner group focuses on plant adaptability and the reprogramming of cell identity and function during developmental transitions and in response to environmental inputs. The research uses genetic, epigenomic, computational, molecular, spatial transcriptomics, biochemical and synthetic biology approaches to study plant inflorescence architecture, among other topics.
Keith Slotkin: The Slotkin group focuses on how plant cells control Transposable Elements (TEs) and how they can be potentially controlled as a tool for genome engineering. One aim is to investigate how to control TE activity in plant cells. They have combined TEs with gene editing tools such as CRISPR-Cas and Cre/Lox to create new tools to manipulate plant genomes.
Nominate by 31 October 2026.
Awardees Announced February 2027.
