KEYNOTE AND PLENARY SPEAKERS
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KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Detlef Weigel, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Germany
Speaking: Thursday 24 June

Detlef Weigel will speak about his natural genetic variation work & about how the science community has been engaging with governments to ensure that Europe can benefit from genetic variation that occurs naturally & that induced by genome editing. Detlef, a German-American scientist, is currently Executive Director of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Royal Society, and recipient of several scientific awards.
The first major finding from his lab was that an Arabidopsis gene could dramatically accelerate flowering of trees; this established a proof of concept for Arabidopsis genetics as a platform for biotechnological discoveries. His group later discovered the first plant microRNA mutant and identified the factor that we now know to be the long sought-after mobile flower-inducing signal. Detlef was also one of the first to exploit natural genetic variation for understanding how the environment affects plant development. In recent years, this work has come to incorporate questions at the interface of evolution and ecology: How can wild plants adapt to climate change, and how do they manage to keep their pathogens at bay? In addition to hypothesis-driven research, his group has a long history of providing new technologies and resources to the community. This has culminated in a collaborative effort to sequence the genomes of over 1,000 natural A. thalianastrains (The 1001 Genomes Project). 

Joanne Chory, Salk Institute, USA​
Speaking: Monday 25 June

Joanne Chory will speak about the Harnessing Plants Initiative (HPI) she is leading, an innovative, scalable and bold approach to fight climate change by optimizing a plant’s natural ability to capture and store carbon and adapt to diverse climate conditions. 

“The HPI led by Chory, executive director of the Harnessing Plants Initiative, and Director of Salk’s Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory, will receive funding of more than $35 million from over 10 individuals and organizations through The Audacious Project, a highly competitive program housed at TED, the nonprofit devoted to ideas worth spreading. The collective commitments represent one of the largest gifts to a single project in the Institute’s history.”


              more description to come!

CONFIRMED PLENARY SPEAKERS

Nicola Patron, Group Leader, Earlham Institute, UK

Elizabeth Sattely, Associate Professor and HHMI Investigator, Stanford University & HHMI, USA

Hongwei Guo, Chair Professor, Director of Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety, Southern University of Science and Technology, China

Katayoon (Katie) Dehesh, University of California, Riverside, USA

Miltos Tsiantis, Max Planck Institute of Plant Breeding Research, Cologne, Germany

Tessa Burch-Smith, Associate Professor, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Xin Li, UBC, Vancouver, Canada

Noah Whiteman, Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Sota Fujii, University of Tokyo, Japan

Pam Ronald, University of California, Davis, USA

Yuling Jiao, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, CAS, China

Vipula Shukla, Senior Program Officer, Discovery R&D, Global Growth & Opportunity, Agricultural Development, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USA

Steve Spoel, Univ. of Edinburgh, UK. Photo credit: Journal of Cell Science: doi: 10.1242/jcs.215046

Kathleen Donohue, Duke University, USA

Mary Gehring, Whitehead Institute, USA

Tim Kelliher, Principal Scientist, Reproduction Biology at Syngenta; Adjunct and Associate Faculty, NCSU

Ken Shirasu, RIKEN, Japan

Ji-Young Lee, Seoul National University, Korea

Roger Deal, Emory University, USA

Naomi Nakayama, Principal Investigator/Group Leader, Imperial College London, UK

David Savage University of California, Berkeley

KEYNOTE AND PLENARY SESSIONS AND SPEAKERS

Monday 21 June
7 - 8 am Pacific Time 
Keynote Seminar
JOANNE CHORY, SALK INSTITUTE, USA

Plenary #1: 8:30 - 9:30 am Pacific Time
Post-transcriptional Mechanisms of Gene Regulation
Hongwei Guo, Southern China University of Science and Technology, China
Steven Spoel, University of Edinburgh, UK

Plenary #2: 9:45- 11:45 am Pacific Time
Systems Approaches to Understanding and Engineering Plant Biology
Nicola Patron, Earlham Institute, UK
Naomi Nakayama, Imperial College London, UK
David Savage, UC Berkeley, USA
Elizabeth Sattely, Stanford University, USA

Tuesday 22 June
Plenary #3: 7 - 8:30 am Pacific Time
Intercellular Communication
Ji-Young Lee, Seoul National University, South Korea
Sota Fujii, University of Tokyo and NAIST, Japan
Tessa Burch-Smith, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA

Plenary #4:  8:45- 10:15 am Pacific Time
Plasticity of Plant Development In Response to the Environment
Yuling Jiao, IGDB- CAS, China
Miltos Tsiantis, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Germany
Kathleen Donohue, Duke University, USA

Wednesday 23 June
Plenary #5: 7 - 8:30 am Pacific Time
New Frontiers in Plant-Biotic Interactions
Sponsored by The Plant Cell
Ken Shirasu, RIKEN, Japan
Xin-Li, University of British Columbia, Canada
Noah Whiteman, UC Berkeley, USA

Plenary #6:  8:45- 10:15 am Pacific Time
Molecular Mechanisms Underlying Cell Differentiation and Intracellular Signaling
Katie Dehesh, UC Riverside, USA
Roger Deal, Emory University, USA
Mary Gehring, MIT-Whitehead, USA

Thursday 24 June
8:30- 9:30 am Pacific Time 
Keynote Seminar
DETLEF WEIGEL, MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY, GERMANY 

Plenary #7:  10- 11:30 am Pacific Time
Translating Research Into Impact
Vi Shukla, Gates Foundation, USA
Tim Kelliher, NCSU and Syngenta, USA
Pam Ronald, UC Davis, USA

Click to see the Community-Led Mini-Symposia