-Magdalen Lindeberg
This summer, Cornell plant pathologists traveled to the XVIII Congress of the International Society for Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions (IS-MPMI) and to Plant Health 2019, the national meeting of the American Society of Phytopathology.
The first of these, held July 14 – 18 in Glasgow, Scotland, was attended by members of the Bogdanove, Martin, Swingle, Smart, Collmer, Filiatrault, and Wang labs, presenting research on various aspects of molecular pathogen-plant interactions in bacterial and nematode systems. Surya Saha, working with the Heck and Mueller programs, presented on “AgriVectors: A systems biology portal for plant pathosystems and arthropod vectors of plant diseases”, and Maria Harrison gave a plenary seminar on mycorrhizal proteins that modulate plant cell structure, signaling, and metabolism. Travels awardees from Cornell included Zoe Dubrow, Carolina Mazo Molina, and Chris Peritore.
Plant Health 2019, held August 3 – 7, also drew Cornell plant pathologists who traveled to Cleveland Ohio from the Ithaca campus, Cornell AgriTech, and Long Island. In addition to the many poster presentations, Cornell speakers in special and technical sections included Margery Daughtrey, Bill Fry, Bill Weldon (Gadoury program), and Xing Ma (Swingle and Perry). Awais Kahn presented a talk on root system architecture as well as moderating and organizing a special session on genomics and phenomics of host resistance in which both Mike Gore and Zhangjun Fei delivered presentations.
In other highlights, David Gadoury participated in the Conversation with an Expert program and Morgan Carter, graduate student in the Bogdanove program, gave a talk as part of I. E. Melhus Graduate Student Symposium on detection of a pathogen protease by Arabidopsis and barley. Carter also spoke on the importance of science advocacy to lawmakers. Katie Gold, recently hired as an assistant professor in SIPS, presented as part of the Schroth – Faces of the Future Session, as well as moderating and organizing a special session on spectroscopy for plant disease detection.
Thank you to the many Cornell plant pathologists who posted images on Twitter including @PlantPathSecret @BogLabCU @ayer_katrin @ZoeDubrow @BA_BreCheese @FruitDiseases
