Elected NAASC member candidate statements: Reverse order 2018-2023

Mary Gehring

I’m interested in serving on NAASC because I strongly believe Arabidopsis remains critical to advancing the frontiers of research, not only for plant biology but for fundamental research relevant to all eukaryotic organisms. This position needs to advocated for to funding agencies, journals, and scientific societies. As we enter an era where new tools and technologies allow us to easily move into non-Arabidopsis systems, it remains vital to push the boundaries of Arabidopsis research. NAASC has an important role to play in keeping Arabidopsis research at the forefront by setting priorities and bringing new members into the community. There is a hunger among younger researchers to be involved in research relevant to climate. This is an opportunity for NAASC amplify the relevance of Arabidopsis research to global problems. My lab is focused on plant epigenetics and seed biology and I have been an Arabidopsis researcher since I was an undergradaute. My relevant experience includes serving on the ABRC scientific advisory committee from 2016-2019 and recently organizing a Gordon Research Conference.

Sharon Kessler

I am honored to be nominated to serve the Arabidopsis community as an elected member of NAASC. I started my plant biology career as a maize geneticist studying leaf epidermal development with Neelima Sinha at UC-Davis. Near the end of my PhD, I became interested in the molecular mechanisms of plant reproduction but knew that this would be a tough challenge in maize. I decided to change model systems to Arabidopsis due to the relative ease of studying plant reproductive development in a rapidly flowering plant and the numerous research tools that had been developed by the Arabidopsis community. I moved to the University of Zurich as a postdoc where I studied the molecular mechanisms of pollen tube reception with Ueli Grossniklaus. I’m currently an Associate Professor at Purdue University where my lab continues to use Arabidopsis as our main model organism for studying intercellular communication during pollen-pistil interactions.

At the 2023 ICAR meeting in Japan, I was happy to see that new tools and techniques continue to facilitate the cutting-edge research that makes Arabidopsis such a powerful system for understanding the basic mechanisms of how plants grow and develop. One of my priorities if elected to NAASC will be to help ensure that our community and funding agencies will continue to invest resources in studying fundamental plant biology processes in Arabidopsis. I’m also committed to promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in our scientific community. As a rural, first-generation college student whose parents didn’t have high school diplomas, I understand some of the challenges faced by underrepresented groups in science. Rural and urban areas have some similar challenges—schools are often underfunded which means that students usually don’t get exposure to plant biology and to the idea that trying to understand how organisms work is a worthwhile career. My outreach activities have focused on exposing high school and junior high students to plant biology in weekly activities at a summer camp at a community center in urban Indianapolis and in hosting high school students in a summer research program at Purdue University. I am also chair of my department’s graduate program, where I have focused on improving our admissions process by using a more holistic application review process that doesn’t penalize groups that are traditionally underrepresented in academia. I also strive to promote inclusivity and belonging and combat imposter syndrome in our first year “Skills for Success in Grad School” course. I hope to take advantage of the larger platform afforded by serving the community on NAASC to continue to promote DEIB and to ensure that Arabidopsis research remains at the forefront of discovering fundamental knowledge on “how plants grow”. 

Zach Nimchuk

In all stages of my career Arabidopsis has been an essential part of my research. My lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill uses Arabidopsis as a model to understand the signaling pathways that control plant development, particularly stem cell regulation and receptor signaling. I did my postdoc in Elliot Meyerowitz’s group at Caltech in this area and I got my PhD in plant pathogen interactions in the lab of Jeff Dangl. I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, where I first started working on Arabidopsis. I am the Associate Chair for research in UNC Biology and have worked in multiple capacities for the UNC BBSP graduate student program, including training and onboarding new graduate students. I am on the editorial board of Plant Cell, a current guest editor for Current Opinions, and was an external advisor for NAASC on previous ICAR meeting planning.  

We still have much to learn about how plants work. As we probe plant biology deeper in the era of CRISPR and next generation omics there still is no plant out there that offers more advantages for dissecting core plant processes than Arabidopsis. New foundational discoveries are being made each and every day using Arabidopsis. As such, there is a continued need to advocate for Arabidopsis research and expand Arabidopsis funding. As a NAASC member would make this a driving mission of my work. Here I would focus on 1) advocating for federal Arabidopsis funding and support for shared community resources; 2) supporting NAASC funding efforts; and 3) enhancing the visibility of the excellent Arabidopsis research this community is doing, including getting our message out to other scientific communities and federal agencies. To keep Arabidopsis research vibrant, it is also necessary to support and grow the community. This is especially true for the next generation of Arabidopsis researchers and in communities which have been historically excluded from STEM research. I believe that science should function for the benefit of everyone and include everyone. Over my career I have organized and been part of several educational outreach programs which provided opportunities for plant STEM research for students from diverse backgrounds and educational levels. In this area at NAASC I would emphasize 1) supporting pathways for student research and participation, focusing on outreach efforts that connect students across educational levels and backgrounds to NAASC community; 2) securing funding for future educational and outreach activities; and 3) supporting graduate and postdoc career resources at NAASC and ICAR. In this arena I would also advocate for enhancing the visibility for current community members who have not benefited from exposure in our meetings and other settings. 

Liang Song

My scientific career has been centered on Arabidopsis since graduate school. During this scientific journey, I’ve received numerous help from members of the community. Serving on NAASC would be one way to give back to the community. I was trained in a flagship university and then a research institute in the States and now have my research group in a large public university in Canada. I hope these experiences will allow me to better understand and pitch to members of different educational backgrounds in both countries. Hobby-wise, growing anything that has a chloroplast would already entertain me. Scientific-wise, Arabidopsis has many unparalleled advantages. After studying an invasive plant species in college, I switched to Arabidopsis in graduate school because molecular mechanisms fascinate me. The amazing system of Arabidopsis has allowed me to understand gene expression through a broad range of projects, including plant microRNA in graduate school, plant hormones and transcription factor networks during postdoc training, and the interplay between environmental stress and development as a principal investigator.

I wish to define DEIB in its broadest possible term. Sustainable support should be prioritized to groups that have been historically vulnerable and those who don’t have an extensive support network, such as indigenous people, women, and ethnic or social minorities. Meanwhile, because no one’s life is free of challenges, perhaps the philosophy and empathy inspired by DEIB can be extended to everyone to build a strong and inclusive community. Most of my trainees are female from various cultural backgrounds. I have been testing and exploring effective, and sometimes personalized approaches to help them achieve their career goals.  As a pre-tenured faculty member, I have few experiences in organizing large meetings. However, I am willing to dedicate time & effort to make ICAR 2024 successful. Besides ICAR 2024, one priority would be to maintain the sustainability of the community both financially and talent-wise. It is essential to keep Arabidopsis relevant to funding agencies, other scientific communities, industrial partners, as well as current and future talent pools. The genetic resources & established stock centers, scientific knowledge & databases, & the feasibility to study Arabidopsis make it a widely accessible system to a very broad community, ranging from well-funded research groups to modest teaching laboratories. I also view Arabidopsis as an important science playground for other plant systems. Because many ground-breaking discoveries have been made, & cutting-edge assays have been established in Arabidopsis, we have strong reasons to believe that Arabidopsis will remain essential to a broader scientific community. The advantage of cost- and time-effective discovery & the potential of knowledge transfer would serve as a basis for the Arabidopsis community to forge partnerships with other plant systems. An additional area that I am interested in is to bridge science, art, & history. This approach is fun to use in talks & outreach activities.

Ment Ayalew

Over the years, I was pleased to engage in many NAASC-organized activities, from attending conferences to contributing to a workshop paper on best practices in plant science outreach to being an assessor for the NAASC ART 21 RCN grant. In doing so, I got the chance to meet my colleagues and members of the community and become familiar with NAASC activities. I now feel it is time to step up my commitment and serve the Arabidopsis community. Below, I will provide an overview of my academic background and interest in serving as a member of NAASC.  In terms of research, I made the discovery that Arabidopsis plants had an antibiotic resistance gene. This discovery raised questions on the mechanism involved and the degree to which plants may be exposed to antibiotics produced by soil bacteria. The mechanism involved appeared distinct from that of bacterial antibiotic resistance genes and challenged me to adopt new approaches that involve modeling and the analysis of Biological Big Data. As a faculty member at an exclusively undergraduate institution, my research has been an essential vehicle for undergraduate training. I have been particularly intentional about training students to become 21st-century biologists with skills and appreciation for quantitative and computational approaches. This significant effort resulted in grants, publications and involvement in service activities such as becoming a member of the Faculty Advisory Board of the Atlanta University Center Data Science Initiative. Finally, it has been a privilege to work at the best HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) and one of two such institutions in the country dedicated to black women. While my teaching and research have been important vehicles for engaging and challenging students, my service equally contributes to the culture of excellence. Since 2015, I have been the co-director of the LINCS program, a Living and Learning Interdisciplinary Community of STEM scholars aspiring to pursue Ph.Ds. or MD/PhDs. It has been a privilege to provide programming, work with this group of about 20 talented students, and nurture their academic and personal development as black women scientists. While my institutional context centers black women, I am also appreciative of the many intersectionalities of our students in terms of ability, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, or religion. I actively ensure the inclusion of all, when designing course material, classroom activities, or programming extracurricular events. Beyond teaching, I view the advancement of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) as an integral part of all the activities we undertake in all spheres of our professional lives.

Why NAASC? Serving on the NAASC committee would further connect me to the science and community around Arabidopsis. In the recent past, I have witnessed how audaciously NAASC tackles scientific and societal challenges when visioning collective scientific directions, organizing the community, and convening conferences (e.g., community-organized sessions at ICAR meetings). I genuinely welcome the nomination to serve on this committee and pledge to get deeply engaged in old or new NAASC activities while bringing my wealth of experience and perspective as a faculty at a PUI and HBCU.

Gloria Muday

The NAASC plays an essential role in building a community of researchers and disseminating information, tools, and resources that makes Arabidopsis an excellent model organism.  I am pleased to be nominated to serve on this committee to give back to the organization that helps our research community thrive.   My laboratory’s research on hormonal signaling in Arabidopsis spans multiple decades, in which we have utilized tools unique to Arabidopsis, including mutants, transgenic reporter lines, and large genomic datasets, to understand auxin and ethylene signaling that control root development.  Our ongoing work also examines plant specialized metabolites from the flavonoid family that control root and guard cell signaling, particularly in regulating the levels of reactive oxygen species that drive signaling pathways.  We apply biochemical, molecular biological, imaging, and systems biology approaches to study these questions and benefit from the tools and approaches developed and shared across the Arabidopsis research community. I am pleased to be part of an Arabidopsis community that is committed to making a home for researchers from a diversity of backgrounds.  A critical part of moving forward to enable the success of individuals with diverse perspectives and backgrounds is to a build an ICAR meeting framework that highlights both research and educational accomplishments from individuals from a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. Another critical feature of NAASC is supporting the next generation of researchers is building programs that provide information on the diversity of postgraduate opportunities. Graduate students and post-doctoral researchers can benefit from understanding opportunities at a range of academic institutions (across the continuum of research and teaching orientation), opportunities in corporate and government research laboratories, and in communicating science are just a few of the available options that we can strive to highlight. Active outreach beyond our research community is also critical, so we can help nonscientists understand how science has improved lives and will continue to do so.  My experiences visiting schools, and taking undergraduates to help me, to teach plant genetics to elementary, middle, and high school students has demonstrated that K-12 students can be excited by science and our Arabidopsis community can help keep this excitement alive by working with these students, to build a scientifically literate population and to develop a diverse pipeline of future researchers. Students are concerned about global climate change, and it is important to help them understand both the impact of a changing climate on the future of agriculture and to see the potential of working to address these challenges with a career in plant biology.

Dior Kelley

1. I am motivated to serve on NAASC because I am excited to experience this organization at a high-level. As an early career scientist, I am enthusiastic about serving in a leadership role in the Arabidopsis community. I will contribute a genuine desire to listen, help and guide. 
2. I have been working with Arabidopsis for 23 years. My first undergraduate research experience was in the laboratories of Jack Okamuro, Diane Jofuku at University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC). At that time, I was involved in forward genetic screen to identify seed size mutants, which involved constant plant propagation and phenotyping. I then went on to do my undergraduate thesis research with Lincoln Taiz at UCSC studying the roles of flavonoids in Arabidopsis growth responses. I also studied receptor-ligand interactions in Arabidopsis pollen as a laboratory technician with Sheila McCormick at the Plant Gene Expression Center, patterning of ovule development during my PhD (Plant Biology) with Charles Gasser at UC Davis, regulation of embryogenesis with Jeff Long at the Salk Institute, and characterized auxin-regulated gene expression in Arabidopsis using proteomics with Mark Estelle (UCSD). Since starting my independent research group at Iowa State University in 2015 we have continued to study auxin regulated growth processes in Arabidopsis. In short, I got hooked on Arabidopsis a long time ago!
3. I define diversity, equity and inclusion as an environment and culture where all are welcome and all are supported. I promote DEI in my laboratory and classroom spaces though advocacy and communication.
4. I am willing to dedicate time to fundraising and organizing. I have experience with both of these activities through my roles as faculty advisor and organizer for various graduate programs at Iowa State University.
5. My priorities for NAASC in the coming 2-5 years are (1) engage early career scientists who are studying Arabidopsis for their PhD and/or postdoctoral studies (2) reissue an updated digital Arabidopsis handbook.
6. Arabidopsis is a keystone eukaryotic organism with extensive genetic and genomic tools. It belongs to a family of economically relevant crops and is a premier organism for foundational plant biology knowledge.
7. My additional areas of interest include higher education and outreach.

Cris Argueso

I am an Associate Professor at Colorado State University. The work in my lab focuses on how plant hormones mediate plant growth and defense, through coordinated mechanisms of hormonal crosstalk.

My first interactions with NAASC were as a young postdoc and Underrepresented Minority (URM) fellow and recipient of travel awards to attend ICAR meetings. Later, as an Assistant Professor, I tried to give back to the NAASC community that had supported me by helping lead workshops for URM fellows at ICAR 2014 in Vancouver, as well as ICAR 2017 in St. Louis.

I am excited about the opportunity to be part of NAASC & work to promote Arabidopsis research, as well as a more inclusive & diverse environment for plant scientists, through these proposals:

1) Promote increased efforts in Diversity, Inclusion and Equity: Promoting a culture that values diversity and inclusion has become a goal shared across scientific societies. But promoting an inclusive environment requires more than just welcoming people of diverse backgrounds. As a NAASC member I would encourage efforts to work on identifying policies and barriers that prevent people of diverse backgrounds not only from entering our scientific community, but also from thriving in it, and propose recommendations to remedy these problems. I would also support efforts to educate the community on the benefits of a diverse scientific community, as well as existence of implicit biases.

2) Renew the relevance of Arabidopsis in plant sciences: While funding for research based on model systems has steadily declined, Arabidopsis research continues to be as relevant as ever for plant biology, continuously leading the way to breakthroughs in mechanistic research. Part of my efforts to renew the relevance of Arabidopsis research in plant biology would be to focus not only on the training, but also on the engagement of students, postdocs and early career scientists in Arabidopsis research in NAASC-promoted activities and governance, particularly ICAR, reshaping these activities to be more welcoming to newcomers and promoting increased interactions between young and established Arabidopsis researchers.

3) Stronger science advocacy for Arabidopsis research: I would also like to see NAASC play a stronger role in advocating for funding for Arabidopsis research, by having closer relationships with funding agencies, and advocating for higher participation of Arabidopsis researchers in grant review panels and federal committees on science policy.

4) Promote innovative and synergistic forms of cooperative research among Arabidopsis researchers: Given the shortage of funding afflicting most Arabidopsis labs, I would like to see NAASC and the Arabidopsis community in general pave the way to innovative forms of cooperative research, where scientific expertise and efforts are leveraged rather than duplicated, with increasing sharing of data, reduction of competitiveness and increased value on synergistic interactions. This could be achieved by the creation of databases of laboratories based on expertise and research interests, to help create networks of researchers that together can tackle important problems in plant biology. These same efforts could also support the diversification of the Arabidopsis community, by including metrics of diversity, such as the Diversify Plant Sciences List. Finally, by including laboratories not only from research universities/institutions but also from primarily undergraduate institutions, we could help strengthen and broaden the recruiting and training of future Arabidopsis researchers.

Adrienne Roeder

I would like to serve on the NAASC to continue building our interdisciplinary and diverse community, to advocate for the importance of Arabidopsis research and its synergies with other plants, and to carry on the traditions of our previous leaders. The advent of genomics and CRISPR have opened a wide variety of plants as new model species, which allows for exciting new research avenues, but also challenges us to integrate and synergize Arabidopsis. I have been considering these challenges while serving on the ICAR 2020/21 external advisory board; I am excited to organize and attend community-generated minisymposia. I have recently joined the ABRC advisory committee, I am a guest editor for Plant Cell, and I am on the advisory board for the 2021 IPMB meeting.

I have worked with Arabidopsis since 1996 when I was an undergraduate screening for embryonic mutants. Now as an associate professor at Cornell, my laboratory and I are fascinated by size. How does a cell decide what size to be and how does it reach that size? How about a flower? We use live imaging, image processing and molecular genetics to analyze how Arabidopsis sepals, leaves, and fruit grow to the correct size and shape. We collaborate extensively with biophysicists and computational experts to build and simulate models of our hypotheses. We hope that learning to finely control size in Arabidopsis will translate to crop plants, allowing us to make precise size changes enhancing yield.

 As a woman in science, considerations of diversity, equity and inclusion impact my life every day. I strive to recognize the worth and dignity of every person. However, that is not sufficient to counter our long history of racism and oppression, so I am learning to be an anti-racist. I try to counter my own subconscious biases by raising them into my awareness and taking the time to make conscious unbiased decisions in graduate admissions, faculty search committees, choosing speakers, etc. I also consider the diversity of the people chosen at every stage of these decisions. I have long been an advocate for women in science. Girls often start to lose confidence in their STEM abilities in middle school. To counteract this trend, for the past 15 years, I have run hands-on scientific workshops for middle school girls through the Explore Your Opportunities (EYO) (http://www.aauw-eyoconference.org) or Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) programs. Currently, my students and I run a workshop using a computational image analysis game for 7th grade girls through the EYO conference that takes place in the spring each year at Mt. Saint Vincent College in the Bronx - New York City. The girls in the Bronx are from diverse backgrounds and often disadvantaged. This workshop combines my passion for supporting women in science with my enthusiasm for interdisciplinary science. I am an advocate for interdisciplinary collaborations, which have been instrumental in my research. Because communication across fields is often a barrier, in 2012 I published a glossary of computational image analysis terms for biologists (https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.076414). Last year I published a Plant Cell Teaching Tool on “Computational image analysis for microscopy” with a hands-on activity (https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.119.tt0819). If you elect me, I will bring these passions to the NAASC.

Keith Slotkin

I am proud to be the product of a Midwest family farm, which I now co-own. Originally trained as a maize geneticist, I began working with Arabidopsis as a post-doc 14 years ago. I quickly realized the strength of Arabidopsis for dissecting molecular mechanisms, which propelled forward my research on transposable element biology and epigenetics. My motivation to serve on NAASC is to drive Arabidopsis techniques, resources and data out of our laboratories and to all other plant biologists. Ten years ago there was a clear distinction between Arabidopsis basic research labs and applied research labs that focus on crops. However, it is now clear that this is an artificial and unnecessary distinction, as Arabidopsis resources and data can enable all plant biologists and belong in all plant biology laboratories. It is my belief that the sustainability of Arabidopsis research will rely on our community’s ability to provide accessible data and easy to use resources. I formed this belief as the former Director of the Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center, where I wrote and received multiple grants to support continued inexpensive and accessible resources for the Arabidopsis community at large. My goal in NAASC will be to develop community grants that 1) continue to enable the Arabidopsis community to produce cutting-edge research & educational tools, and 2) to make Arabidopsis research easy to access & implement so we can welcome new researchers into our community and enable all of plant biology.

Federica Brandizzi

I am keen to serve the Arabidopsis scientific community with a term on the NAASC as I am confident that I can contribute to the redesigning of the ICAR 2020 meeting and to the advancement of the organization. Over the last decade, I have used the power of the Arabidopsis genetics, which I integrated with a broad range of techniques, ranging from advanced microscopy to genomics, and I developed a research portfolio that intertwines cell biology with development and stress responses. Therefore, my expansive approach to study a broad range of fundamental biological questions will aid the organization of a diverse and inclusive scientific program at the ICAR 2020 meeting. I have made a significant impact in instances requiring leadership for the improvement of existing practices and I have fostered positive change. For example, as Senior Editor for The Plant Journal, I spearheaded significant advances in the review process, including a double-blinded review, to increase fairness of the review process. I am successful in grant acquisition as evidenced by the fact that my lab has been funded with no interruption by numerous federal agencies. Therefore, I believe that I can positively contribute to the fundraising on behalf of the NAASC. Finally, as a successful charity fundraiser, a long-distance runner and a mother of three young kids, I am a strong advocate for a healthy work-life balance and the participation and training of underrepresented minorities in science, especially women with children. I believe these characteristics can be very helpful in shaping successful subcommittees at ICAR meetings.

Anna Stepanova

Arabidopsis research has been at the forefront of basic plant sciences for over 30 years. With the funding climate shifting towards applied areas of plant biology, more and more Arabidopsis scientists are gradually moving away from working on Arabidopsis. Nonetheless, fundamental and applied plant biologists alike continue tapping in and taking advantage of the basic knowledge, tools and resources being generated in Arabidopsis to advance their research on a wide range of species, from liverworts to agricultural crops, from exotic plants to bioenergy models. It would be hard, if not impossible, to make sense of a next-gen sequencing dataset from, let’s say, sweetpotato without having Arabidopsis functional gene annotations handy, or to quickly test one’s hypothesis on a candidate cotton gene without relying on an extensive Arabidopsis insertional mutant collection for a complementation experiment. I do not think Arabidopsis has exhausted its potential as a model. I believe that the plant biology community should be encouraged and would continue to rely on Arabidopsis for many years to come, as it simply does not make sense to spend 15 years waiting for a transgenic poplar tree to flower when the same biological question can be answered in Arabidopsis in just months. It is up to us, Arabidopsis-trained geneticists, cell biologists, physiologists and biochemists, to continue the legacy, and this is the reason why I want to serve on NAASC -- to advocate for Arabidopsis as an efficient discovery platform that benefits the research of every plant biologist. Whether Arabidopsis is a steppingstone for doing great things in other species or the primary model that enables one to shed light on fundamental biological processes, we as a community all gain from the advances being made in Arabidopsis and thus should continue investing into this economical yet powerful experimental system and keep on training the next generation of plant scientists in Arabidopsis research. And a few words about me. My main area of expertise is in plant hormones. I use genetics, molecular and synthetic biology as my primary research approaches and rely on Arabidopsis and tomato as key models. I am also passionate about science outreach and enjoy working with elementary school children on simple experiments through our hands-on program, Plants4kids (https://plantae.org/plants4kids/). Outside of the lab, I am a mother to two teenagers, an avid gardener.