Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The New Phytologist Tansley Medal 2019 – Philippa Borrill and Kai Zhu

2020; Wiley; Volume: 228; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/nph.17028

1469-8137

Sarah Lennon, Liam Dolan,

Botany and Plant Ecology Studies

It is our great pleasure to announce the winners of the 2019 New Phytologist Tansley Medal for Excellence in Plant Science as Philippa Borrill and Kai Zhu. The Tansley Medal is awarded to recognize outstanding achievements by scientists in the early stages of their careers (Woodward & Hetherington, 2010, 2011; Dolan, 2012, 2013, 2014; Lennon & Dolan, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020), and it is a great pleasure to award this prize jointly to Philippa and Kai. Philippa Borrill is a Lecturer in Plant Biology in the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham, UK. Philippa’s research focuses on understanding the role of senescence in determining the nutrient content of wheat grain. By adopting an array of genetic and genomic approaches, Philippa aims to elucidate the developmental mechanisms controlling this, as well as the identification of new targets for breeding wheat with improved nutritional value. Philippa’s work also extends to the development of key resources for wheat genomics. She considers the opportunities for using cereal crops as experimental systems in her Tansley insight ‘Blurring the boundaries between cereal crops and model plants’ (in this issue of New Phytologist, Borrill, pp. 1721–1727). Kai Zhu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA. Kai is a global ecologist and quantitative environmental whose work integrates ecological theory with advanced statistical and computing science tools to study the impact of global change on plants. His current research focuses on plant and soil responses to environmental change, both spatially and temporally. Kai’s Tansley insight is entitled ‘Understanding forest dynamics by integrating age and environmental change’ (Zhu, pp. 1728-1733) and it explores how global forest-age data and and hierarchical models can help us better understand forest dynamics. More information on Philippa and Kai and their research can be found in the accompanying profile articles in this issue of the journal (pp. 1717 and 1719, respectively). You can also visit the Tansley Medal pages of the New Phytologist Foundation website at: https://www.newphytologist.org/awards/tansleymedal. We offer our warmest congratulations to Philippa and Kai and their fellow finalists, and we wish them continued success in their future careers. The judging panel was comprised of the following New Phytologist Editors: Prof. Amy Austin, Prof. Liam Dolan and Prof. Elena Kramer.