Advisory Board and Editors Plant Science
Victoria Sosa
PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Research interests include the phylogeny and evolution of plants with a particular focus on groups of vascular plants that are distributed in Mesoamerica and especially endemic to Mexico. Also interested in cloud forest flora. Systematics and taxonomy of orchids in Epidendreae are as well part of my interests. In addition, I am conducting investigation on diversity, evolutionary biology and ecology of geophytes an interesting life form in plants. Genomics and economic botany of underutilized fruits is one of my new lines of research.
Valeria Spagnuolo
Valeria Spagnuolo is Associate Professor in Botany at the Department of Biology at the Federico II University of Naples. She obtained a Ph.D. in molecular systematics (plants) and the scientific qualification to Full Professor 05/A1 (Botany) during the ASN 2018.
Dr. Spagnuolo was involved in several research projects, with a focus on biomonitoring and phytoremediation, within her task/unit and in international teams (the most recent ones: EU Project FP7- ENV.2011.3.1.9-1 Mossclone (2012-15); LIFE11 ENV/IT/275 Ecoremed (2012-2017); PON 03PE_00107. Biopolis (2013-2017).
Dr. Spagnuolo's expertise includes genetic variation in natural populations of mosses along environmental gradients; biomonitoring of air quality by cryptogams and vascular plants; and phytoremediation of metal-polluted soil. In recent years, her long research experience has been centred on plant response to abiotic stresses and biomonitoring of indoor air pollution.
She is involved in editorial activities, as a reviewer for international journals (e.g. Environmental Pollution, Frontiers in Plant Science), as a guest editor in Atmosphere and Plant Journals, and as an editor of the latest Italian edition of Raven (Zanichelli).
Dr. Spagnuolo has published over 60 publications (Scopus ID 6602352988), with an h-index 20 and over 1200 citations. She also detects a patent as the inventor of a tool for biomonitoring of air quality (EP 3 076 171 A1).
Gavin B Stewart
Gavin is interested in applied research synthesis (combining scientific information to inform policy). Primary interests are meta-analysis and Bayesian belief networks. He has a deep mislike of P values much preferring effect sizes and confidence intervals, or better still probabilities of direct relevance to decision-making. Gavin's work on meta-analysis spans applied agriculture, food, rural development, ecology and medicine reflecting a belief in generic methods for Evidence Based X (EBX).
I am an elected member of the Society for Research Synthesis Methods and associate editor of its journal, Research Synthesis Methods. I am also associate editor for PeerJ and statistical editor for the Cochrane Pain and Palliative Care Group. I’m a member of the National Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis Meta-analysis Working Group and co-author of the Handbook of Meta-analysis in ecology and evolution. I am also co-chair and editor of a new Campbell Collaboration Food Security group.
Keiko Sugimoto
Group leader at RIKEN Plant Science Center. Editorial Board Member of Cell Reports, The Plant Cell, Genes to Cells, Plant and Cell Physiology, and Frontiers in Plant Science
Genlou Sun
Professor of Plant Molecular Genetics and Evolutionary Biology, Editorial Board members of Molecular Breeding, Frontier in Genetics, PLOS ONE, Acta Agronomica Sinica and Diversity
Xiaolin Sun
Senior scientist, Host-Microbe Interactions, The New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research.
Mark Tibbett
Professor of Soil Ecology at the University of Reading. Co-Editor-in-Chief of Soil Research.
Research interests include mycorrhiza, plant-soil interactions, terrestrial biogeochemistry and restoration ecology.
Duangjai Tungmunnithum
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Duangjai Tungmunnithum completed her Ph.D. at Chulalongkorn University in 2016, and won the DPST Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct her Postdoctoral research in Japan at the National Museum of Nature and Science focusing on medicinal plant and phytochemistry in the same year. After completing her research in Japan, she obtained a lecturer position at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Mahidol University, Thailand.
Her expertise is in biochemistry, innovative green extraction methods, biological activity both antioxidant and anti-aging from plant extracts and pure phytochemical compounds for cosmetic and pharmaceutical applications both in vitro, in vivo and in cellulo models.
According to her research profiles, she has received a large number of outstanding research both national and international levels e.g. the Junior Research Fellowship from French Government, Franco-Thai Mobility Programme 2020-2021 and LE STUDIUM Research Fellowship.
Jana M U'Ren
Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Pathology, Washington State University. PhD in Plant Pathology and Microbiology from The University of Arizona. Research focus on the ecology and evolution of fungal endophytes.
Jana Vamosi
I am a biodiversity scientist examining the macroevolution, macroecology, community ecology, and conservation biology of plants. I often incorporate phylogenetic approaches to questions pertaining to the evolutionary ecology of plant-insect interactions.
Robert VanBuren
Assistant professor in the department of Horticulture at Michigan State University. Previously I was an NSF-NPGI postdoctoral associate at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. I completed my PhD at the University of Illinois under Ray Ming. My broad expertise are in the areas of plant genetics, genomics, evolution and molecular biology. I am interested in crop improvement and domestication, the evolution of sex chromosomes, and adaptive traits to arid environments such as the evolution of CAM photosynthesis and desiccation tolerance in resurrection plants.
Thiago M Venancio
Associate Professor (UENF; Brazil), 2010-present; Postdoctoral fellow at NCBI-NIH (USA), 2008-2010; PhD in Bioinformatics (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil), 2004-2008.
My lab focuses on genomic and transcriptomic studies of plants, fungi and bacteria. Our main goals involve the generation and analysis of big biological datasets using computational methods to understand key aspects of living organisms, such as: 1) the evolution of multidrug resistance genes in Fungi; 2) the evolutionary basis of gene essentiality in Bacteria and Archaea; 3) the transcriptional landscape and regulatory apparatus of land plants, particularly legumes.