Principal Investigator, Asst. Professor Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford University Stanford, California
Climate change is menacing our natural ecosystems and agricultural production through ever more frequent droughts, extreme temperatures, disruption of traditional insect and disease patterns, and even altering the synchronicity between plants’ flowering times and the availability of insect pollinators. Plants are the most important natural modulator of Earth’s climate. As such, plant biology will increasingly become a frontier discipline in science that will drive cutting-edge innovations in science and technology to understand life in a warming planet and to tackle global sustainability, food security, human health, and biodiversity. Understanding and engineering plant resilience will be part of the essential toolkit for the survival of humanity and the biosphere of our planet. In this session, we will have organizers and speakers ranging from early career and senior faculty who conduct pioneering research on how plants withstand and adapt to heat, nutrient deficiency, drought, and the interactions between plants, microbes, and environment. Presentations and associated panel discussions are aimed at providing a much-needed catalyst to highlight a rapidly emerging plant research topic that is highly relevant to ongoing global efforts to find innovative solutions based on fundamental understanding of the impact of climate on plant life.