Keynote Speakers

Marty Dickman, Professor/Director Received his B.S. degree in Horticulture and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Plant Pathology/Biochemistry from the University of Hawaii. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Biological Chemistry at Washington State University, he joined the faculty at the University of Nebraska in 1987 as an assistant professor, was promoted to full professor in 1997 and was named the Charles Bessey Professor of Plant Pathology. In December 2005, Dr. Dickman was appointed Director of the Institute for Plant Genomics and Biotechnology at Texas A&M University where he is the Christine Richardson Professor in Agriculture. He is also the Director of the Borlaug Genomics and Bioinformatics Center. He has numerous editorial responsibilities including Senior Editor for GM Crops, Frontiers in Plant Biotechnology and Physiological and Molecular Plant Pathology among others. His research centers on the molecular and mechanistic bases of fungal plant disease development and plant stress responses with particular emphasis on the regulation of programmed cell death. Dr. Dickman is a Fellow of the American Phytopathological Society (APS). He is also the recipient of E.C. Stakman Award-2011 for excellence in plant pathology. He was recently named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Jim Dunwell, Professor After graduating in Botany from Oxford University, I worked for 16 years at the John Innes Institute in Norwich where I obtained a PhD in Plant Physiology. My research interests included the production of haploid plants and the development of in vitro regeneration techniques for a range of crop plants. I then spent 10 years in the commercial sector at ICI Seeds, later Zeneca Plant Sciences, at the Jealott’s Hill Research Station, where I was responsible for an international programme on the development and exploitation of transgenic crops. With the support of a BBSRC Industrial Fellowship, I moved in 1996 to the University of Reading where I am Professor of Plant Biotechnology and have research interests in plant breeding, gene expression and protein evolution. I recently served on the Food Standards Agency Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes, and the Royal Society Working Group on biological mechanisms for enhancing food-crop production. I am now a member of the Defra Advisory Committee for Releases to the Environment, the group that advises the UK government on the growing of GM crops.
Andrew Paterson, Professor/Director Andrew H. Paterson, Ph.D. is a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Georgia, and the head of the Plant Genome Mapping Laboratory (www.plantgenome.uga.edu). Prof. Paterson’s research uses genomic tools and approaches to study crop improvement, plant biodiversity, and molecular evolution. His lab has contributed to knowledge of sorghum, cotton, sugarcane, peanut, Miscanthus, switchgrass, Bermuda grass, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, rice, tomato, maize, and other crops, as well as several major weeds, one nitrogen-fixing bacterium (Azospirillum), and a group of viruses important in poultry. He received his B.S. (Summa Cum Laude, 1982) in agriculture from the University of Delaware, and his M.S. (1986) in plant breeding and Ph.D. (1988) in plant genetics from Cornell University, undertaking postdoctoral studies with Steven Tanksley at Cornell. From 1989-1991 he was employed by the E. I. DuPont Company, also serving as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Delaware. In 1991, he joined the faculty of Texas A&M University, where he was promoted to the Christine Richardson Endowed Professorship in 1996. He moved to the University of Georgia in 1999, where he became a Distinguished Research Professor in 2002. He has authored or co-authored more than 260 refereed publications, 58 book chapters, edited 4 books, and given more than 180 professional presentations.