Keynote Speakers

Confirmed Keynote Speakers Include:

Glyn studied biophysics at the University of York before obtaining a PhD in soil and root biophysics in the department of Plant and Soil Science at Aberdeen University. He then moved to a Research Leader position at the SCRI in 1988, where he has remained until now, collaborating widely. Glyn's main research interests concern the biophysical interactions that occur between roots and the soil. This involves both how soil physical conditions limit root growth, but also how roots influence and interact with their rhizosphere. Current interests include developing new methods of measuring and screening root systems, using non-destructive imaging methods (CT, timelapse imaging, and image tracking) and electrical capacitance techniques; the role of root morphology and rhizodeposition in influencing root penetration of hard soils – including the root cap, border cell production and exudation, and root hairs; water-relations and transport in the rhizosphere; the mechanical reinforcement of soils by plant roots; and the interface between engineering and the biological sciences.

Glyn's talk will consider recent developments concerning biophysical and biogeochemical interactions in the rhizosphere, with a forward look to promising approaches and future challenges in this important area of research.

Gabriele Berg obtained her diploma in biology (ecology) from Rostock University (Germany) in 1986 and her Ph.D. degree in microbiology from the same university. She got a Heisenberg grant from the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and became full professor in environmental biotechnology at Graz University of Technology (Austria) in 2005. Her research interests are focused on rhizosphere-associated microorganisms, especially to understand their structure, function and interaction with plants and pathogens. Another focus is to translate obtained results into new biotechnological concepts for our environment. For example, in cooperation with companies she developed several products to control soil-borne diseases (e.g. RhizoStar®, Salavida®). She was involved in risk assessment studies for transgenic plants as well as for biocontrol agents. Results have published in more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and in several patents. Gabriele is member of the editorial board of FEMS Microbial Ecology and Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions.

Gabriele's presentation will focus on the rhizosphere-associated bacterial genus Stenotrophomonas, which is of high biotechnological, ecological but - as opportunistic pathogen - also of medical interest due to the versatility of the different species.

Ray is a community ecologist with a primary focus on plants. He is interested in how organisms interact with each other because interactions can sometimes shed light on fundamental aspects of communities - do communities simply function as independent competing populations that happen to be mixed together, or do adaptation and evolution produce integration and interdependence among organisms? Much of his research has focused on “facilitation” among plants, interactions in which one species benefits another. Ray’s work has been conducted in savannas, grasslands, salt marshes, shrub lands, forests, deserts, and alpine systems. Another facet of his research focuses on exotic plant invasions. He is fascinated by biogeographic patterns in which relatively uncommon species in their native ranges become far more abundant in their non-native ranges. Ray has also made efforts to quantify a few of these patterns and has studied soil biota, allelopathic interactions, resource competition, herbivory, and disturbance in an effort to understand why some species may become invasive. The biogeographic transformation demonstrated by invaders suggests that natural communities may be shaped by evolutionary trajectories among species from across all trophic levels.

Ray will speak about the important role soil biota may play in the invasions of many exotic plants.

Leo Eberl received his PhD from the Technical University of Graz, Austria, in 1992. He was Postdoc (1992-1995) at the Technical University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and group leader (1996-2002) at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. Since 2003 he is Professor of Microbiology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and since 2006 director of the Department of Microbiology. He has authored more than 110 peer reviewed articles and reviews and 12 book chapters.

Leo has been working in the field of bacterial cell-to-cell communication (quorum sensing) for more ten years, focusing on analyses of the molecular mechanisms underlying such regulatory systems in various Gram-negative bacteria as well as on ecological aspects of bacterial signalling. He has made significant contributions to unravel the importance of quorum sensing for the interaction of bacteria with each other in multicellular aggregates and with their eukaryotic hosts. His research group uses Pseudomonas putida, Serratia liquefaciens and members of the Burkholderia cepacia complex as model organisms to investigate interactions between bacteria on the surface of roots and to analyze their effect on the host plant. Another interest is to study the role of N-acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL)-mediated signalling in the expression of biocontrol activities.

Leo will speak about role of bacterial cell-to-cell communication in the plant rhizosphere with a particular focus on AHL-dependent expression of biocontrol activities in members of the genus Burkholderia.

Dr. Hirsch was the first person to show that early nodulin gene expression was induced independently of rhizobia by treating the roots with auxin transport inhibitors, which altered their endogenous hormone levels. Her expertise in biological nitrogen fixation and the interaction between plants and their beneficial microbes has led to valuable and ongoing collaborations with scientists in Australia, Israel, Mexico, Thailand, Brazil, Japan, Argentina, and Pakistan.

She was awarded an NSF Faculty Award for Women (1990-1995) and a Research Prize from the Instituto Politecnico Nacional of México in the Programma Institucional de Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo Sustentable (1996-1997). She was also named a Fellow of the American Society of Plant Biologists of the Inaugural Class of 2007 and was elected as a corresponding member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences in 2007.

Anne's presentation will focus on the sequencing and annotation of the genomes of the two Micromonospora species, B. simplex, and four species of plant-associated beta-rhizobia (Burkholderia).

Monica Höfte obtained her diploma of Agricultural Engineer from the Ghent University in Belgium in 1984 and her Ph.D. degree in microbial ecology from the same university in 1990. She did a post-doc at the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland in 1995. She became professor in plant pathology in 1997 (associate professor, 1997; full professor, 2006) and she is currently the head of the laboratory of Phytopathology at the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering of the Ghent University. Her research interests are biological and integrated control of plant pathogens and natural and induced resistance mechanisms in a wide variety of tropical (rice, banana, and cocoyam) and temperate crops (cauliflower, leek, lettuce, tomato, and bean). She has published several book chapters and more than 100 peer-reviewed papers. She is coordinating editor of Plant Pathology and BioControl and member of the editorial board of Journal of Phytopathology, Microbial Biotechnology and BioControl Science and Technology.

Monica will present a paper about the role of cyclic lipopeptides and phenazines produced by Pseudomonas spp. in root colonization, biofilm formation and biological control of soilborne plant pathogens.

Yakov Kuzyakov obtained diploma in agronomy from Martin-Luther-University in Halle (Germany) in 1986, and PhD in soil biochemistry in Moscow Agricultural Academy (1990). Later he worked at Humboldt-University of Berlin to C and N modeling. Studies on rhizosphere processes he started in 1997 at University of Hohenheim (Stuttgart) where he got habilitation degree in 2002. In this period he also worked in University of California Santa Cruz and University of Wales in Bangor. Yakov was professor for landscape biogeochemistry at University of Cottbus and ZALF Müncheberg (2006) and professor for agroecosystem research at University of Bayreuth (2006-2011).

Yakov was awarded with Heisenberg-fellowship of German Research Foundation (DFG, 2002-2005), Visiting Professorship of Chinese Academy of Sciences (2009), Sir Allan Sewell Fellowship of Griffiths University (2010). His paper to priming effects belongs to Citation Classics of Soil Biology & Biochemistry.

Yakov’s research interests include transformation of root exudates and other low molecular weight organic substances in soil, fluxes and turnover of C and N in the rhizosphere, changes of microbial biomass activity by rhizodeposition, priming effects, and partitioning of CO2 fluxes. For studies of C and N transformations in soil his research group uses various combinations of isotope labeling and natural abundance approaches.

Yakov will address the linkage between aboveground CO2 assimilation by plants and cycles of C and N in the rhizosphere, lifetime of hotspots around the roots and will show future changes of microbial activity in soil under elevated CO2.

Jian Feng obtained a PhD in plant nutrition for his work on silicon nutrition in rice at the department of Agricultural Chemistry in Kyoto University. He then moved to Suntory Institute for Bioorganic Research and worked on biosynthetic pathway of phytosiderophores and uptake mechanisms of iron in barley. In 1995, he got a position of assistant professor at Research Institute for Bioresources, Okayama University and started to work on Al tolerance mechanisms in plants. After four years, he moved to Faculty of Agriculture, Kagawa University as an associate professor. In 2005, he was back to the present institute as a full professor and group leader. His current interest is identification of transporters involved in the uptake of essential and beneficial elements and in the detoxification of toxic minerals. His group has recently identified transporters involved in Si uptake and distribution, iron uptake and translocation, Al detoxification, Cd sequestration, etc.

Jian Feng's presentation will focus on transporters involved in the uptake and detoxification of minerals in rhizosphere.

Liesje Mommer (1976) studied biology in Wageningen, The Netherlands, and graduated cum laude in 2000. She obtained her PhD degree at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands in 2005. In her PhD, she studied submergence-induced shoot plasticity and its functional consequences for flooding tolerance, by combining single-species studies on the ecophysiological mechanisms of acclimation to submergence with species-wide comparisons to put the findings in an ecological perspective. This approach involved an integrated use of microscopical, physiological, molecular and statistical methods. As a post-doc she continued investigating the physiological responses of plants and their ecological consequences, but shifted the subject from under water to underground: the field of root behaviour, which is still so poorly understood at the community level. One of the challenges of this field is the difficulty for experimentation. Therefore, she co-designed the Nijmegen Phytotron, (www.science.ru.nl/phytotron) a facility that allows experiments on root interactions at larger scale in time and space, which are required in order to translate short-term plant behaviour to community consequences. Furthermore, she found research partners for the development of a quantitative molecular technique to determine species abundance in root samples from multi-species communities and other ecogenomic approaches in root research. In 2009 she was awarded a prestigious NWO-VENI grant in order to investigate the effect of root interations in biodiversity contexts. Therefore, she is performing biodiversity experiments linking root behaviour to community consequences.

Liesje’s presentation will be on interspecific root interactions determining community processes.

Laurent Philippot is Director of Research at the French National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA) in Dijon, France. He is interested in the ecology of soil microbial communities, especially those involved in nitrogen cycling. His research focuses on the understanding of abundance, structure and activities of microbial communities, their major drivers and how it relates to ecosystem functioning.

Laurent Philippot will be speaking on “Microbial community ecology and biochemical cycling in the rhizosphere.”

Philippe Schmitt-Kopplin received his MSc from the Institut Polytechnique de Lorraine (INPL) in Nancy France of in 1990. He then worked at the Institute of Ecological Chemistry-IÖC/GSF and Technische Universität Munchen (TUM) in Munich from which he obtained his Ph.D. (1995) under direction of Prof. A. Kettrup. In 1995-1996 he was a postdoctoral research fellow from the National Research Council (NRC) with Dr. A.W. Garrison at the US-Environmental Protection Agency in Athens Georgia, USA and worked on chiral separations of pollutants with capillary separation techniques (CE, GC). In 1996 he came back to IÖC/GSF Munich as a young research scientist and also obtained his Docteur de L´INPL.

His research efforts are focused on the development of new and powerful research tools enabling the targeted and non targeted analysis of/in complex biological (metabolomics) and organic geochemistry related mixtures. Dr. Schmitt-Kopplin has specialized in the field of capillary separation sciences with particular emphasis on the coupling to mass spectrometry in the mid 1990s. He has published over 120 publications including many book chapters and reviews. He sits on the Editorial Board of the journal Electrophoresis with an annual special issue on "capillary electrophoresis coupled to mass "spectrometry" and edited the book "Capillary electrophoresis, from small to macromolecules" with Springer in March 2008.

Phil's presentation will focus on how Metabolomic, as the comprehensive study of metabolic reactions is growing very rapidly and integrates the knowledge of earlier developed omics-branches such as genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics.

Dr Alexia Stokes received her PhD from the University of York UK in 1994. In collaboration with the Forestry Commission in Edinburgh, she studied the growth responses of young trees subjected to wind loading. Alexia’s particular interest was to understand how tree growth and architecture adapts to mechanical stresses, with a special focus on the root system. After post-doctoral study in Germany, examining root wood strength, Alexia began work at INRA, Bordeaux, France. Working principally on Maritime pine, Alexia and colleagues investigated tree root anchorage with regard to wind storms. In 2005, Alexia began work in China for 2 years, studying how vegetation (plant root systems) could be used to fix soil on slopes against landslides and erosion. She is now based at INRA, Montpellier, France and continues her work on tree mechanics and slope stability in the French Alps and southern China. Recent interests include the ecophysiology of tree root growth at high altitudes and in winter, as well as an understanding of global patterns in root functional traits. Through the use of models at different scales, Alexia aims at implementing fundamental knowledge thus making it available to the stakeholder.

Alexia will talk about the importance of root architecture in models and using knowledge when upscaling.

Ted Turlings completed his studies at Leiden University, where he obtained a bachelors and masters degree in Biology, with a specialization in Ecology. After a brief post-doctoral period in Florida he moved to Switzerland in 1993. He first spent three years at the ETH-Zurich as an assistant professor and contributed to teaching in insect ecology and pest management. In 1996 he obtained a prestigious START-fellowship, which he took to the University of Neuchâtel to start his own research group; and subsequently employed as a research director and later as full professor. His group of Fundamental and Applied Research in Chemical Ecology (FARCE) is best known for its efforts to enhance plant-produced signals that help the plants protect themselves against insect pests.

Ted Turlings has published about one hundred peer-reviewed, well-cited articles, some of which have appeared in journals such as Science, Nature, PNAS and Plant Cell. He has received various honours and awards, and has record-breaking successes in obtaining external funding for his research. He is currently the director of National Centre of Research Plant Survival, a collaborative Swiss research network that comprises more than fifty scientists. He is also the director of finances of the Institute of Biology and the head of the university's doctoral program in Organismal Biology.

Ted's presentation is on plant-mediated tritrophic interactions in the rhizosphere.

Professor Tyerman has researched nutrition, salinity and water relations in plants for some 25 years with a focus on roots. In 2001 he obtained the Wine Industry Chair of Viticulture at the University of Adelaide, which has provided opportunities to apply his research to grapevine root physiology. He has received several awards for his plant physiology research and was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2003. He has won a prestigious Australian Research Council Professorial Fellowship to investigate the link between Ca transport and water transport in plants.

Professor Tyerman will present work from his lab investigating how aquaporins regulate water transport through roots and how shoot to root signalling is important in this process.

Dr. Daniel van der Lelie obtained his PhD in Mathematics and Sciences from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, in 1989. In August 2001, he joined the Biology Department of Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), in Upton, New York (USA). During his tenure at BNL his research focused on the interface between fundamental and applied studies. In January 2011, he joined RTI International in North Carolina, where he is heading the Center for Agricultural and Environmental Biotechnology (CAEB). The focus of his work at CAEB is on sustainable agriculture, ethnobotany, food safety and wellness, environmental remediation and site management, and biofuel production and waste conversion. His research has resulted in over 130 publications in peer reviewed journals, including Nature, Nature Chemistry and Nature Biotechnology.

Niels' presentation encompasses the application of plant associated bacteria for improved phytoremediation of organic contaminants; as well as the use of plant associated bacteria to help the host plant to overcome general stress responses caused by hostile environmental conditions. Niels will also discuss the use of bacteria to complement the metabolic properties of their host plant.

Jos Vanderleyden obtained a Masters in Bioscience Engineering at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and a Ph.D in Bioscience Engineering at the same university in 1981. He spent 18 months as a Visiting Research Associate at Washington University, St. Louis, USA and 6 months at the Institut Pasteur, Paris. Currently, he is full professor at the Department of Microbial and Molecular Systems of the K.U.Leuven. His research interests are in microbial genetics and systems microbiology with focus on microbe-microbe and microbe-host signaling, an area in which he has published over 290 articles in peer reviewed journals.

Dr Vanderleyden will discuss how plants can benefit from Azospirillum inoculation.

Fu-Suo Zhang, professor in plant nutrition in the College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China, specialized in rhizosphere management and resources use and environment protection in intensive agriculture. He has published more than 140 international peer-reviewed papers and has received numerous national and international awards.

Professor Zhang will explore how the achievement of synchronously high nutrient use efficiency as well as high crop productivity has become a great challenge in the intensive agriculture of China. Furthermore, he will discuss how the strategies of rhizosphere management have proved to be an effective approach in increasing nutrient use efficiency and crop productivity, therefore moving towards sustainable crop production for main crops in China.