Prof. Dr. Keiko Torii

Keynote Lecture

https://molecularbiosci.utexas.edu/directory/keiko-torii

Torii is an investigator of Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Johnson & Johnson Centennial Chair of Plant Cell Biology at the Department of Molecular Biosciences, The University of Texas at Austin. During 2013-2022, Torii ran her second lab at the Institute of Transformative Biomolecules at Nagoya University, Japan as an Oversea Principal Investigator. Torii investigates how positional cues influence cell-fate decisions, translating into functional tissue patterning during plant development. Specifically, using stomatal development as a model, her group studies how plant cells interpret multiple, often conflicting signals to decide whether to proliferate or differentiate into specific cell types: stomatal guard cells, which facilitate gas exchange and transpiration, and epidermal pavement cells, which protect plants from environmental insults. Her team has discovered how peptide-receptor signal transduction pathways fine-tune the spatiotemporal dynamics of cell division and differentiation in the plant epidermis through interplay with master regulatory transcription factors and cell cycle machinery. Currently, her group seeks to delineate peptide-receptor signal specificity between stomatal development and plant immunity.

Prof. Dr. Ueli Grossniklaus

The EMBO Keynote Lecture

https://www.botinst.uzh.ch/en/research/grossnik.html

Ueli Grossniklaus studied Molecular Biology at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel where, in 1993, he received a PhD in Cell Biology for his research in developmental genetics on Drosophila embryogenesis. After a short stay in computational biology at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, where he used computational approaches to model genetic problems, he set up an independent research group at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he started to study plant reproductive biology. In 1999, he was appointed Professor of Plant Developmental Genetics at the University of Zürich.The long-term goal of Ueli Grossniklaus’ research is to elucidate the molecular basis of cell specification, cell-cell communication, and epigenetic gene regulation with a focus on plant reproduction. We cover various aspects of reproduction at the physical, molecular, cellular, organismal, and ecological level. A major research focus lies on understanding signaling processes during pollen tube growth and reception, of which we identified many players of the plant-specific FERONIA signal transduction pathway, which turned out to be involved in a multitude of physiological and developmental processes. We have also made significant contributions towards elucidating the role of epigenetics in plant reproduction, centering on the regulation and function of the imprinted MEDEA gene. A considerable effort is placed on the engineering of apomixis, the clonal reproduction through seeds, which has a tremendous potential for agriculture. Using maize and Arabidopsis as a model, we have performed genetic screens for mutants that mimic specific elements of apomixis. Using one of these mutants in combination with genome elimination, we were the first to produce clonal seeds in a crop plant using a genetic approach to engineer synthetic apomixis.

Prof. Dr. Thorsten Hamann

Invited Speaker

https://www.ntnu.edu/employees/thorsten.hamann

Thorsten Hamann received his MSc and PhD from the Eberhard-Karls University Tübingen, Germany in 2001. The topic of his PhD thesis (in the group of Gerd Jürgens) was the role of the AUX/IAA gene BODENLOS in embryonic pattern formation in Arabidopsis thaliana. After a brief stint with Bayer Crop Science in Frankfurt he joined Chris Somerville´s group at the Carnegie Department for Plant Biology in Stanford, funded initially by a DFG postdoctoral fellowship. During his time at Carnegie he became interested in understanding how plant cells monitor and maintain the functional integrity of their cell walls. He returned to Europe in 2006 and took up a lectureship position at Imperial College London in 2007. In 2012 he moved to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim to take up a position as associate professor and was promoted to full professor in 2019. His research activities currently focus on the mode of action of the cell wall integrity maintenance mechanism in Arabidopsis and Fragaria; modulation of drought stress responses and interactions between the parasitic plant Cuscuta campestris and it´s hosts.

Prof. Dr. Ora Hazak

Invited Speaker

https://www.unifr.ch/bio/en/research/plant-and-microbial-biology/hazak-group.html

Ora Hazak studied Biology at Tel Aviv University, where she completed her MSc and PhD degrees under the supervision of Prof. Shaul Yalovsky, investigating the role of ROP and calcium signaling in Arabidopsis root development. She then moved to Switzerland for postdoc at the University of Lausanne in the laboratory of Prof. Christian Hardtke, where she studied Arabidopsis root protophloem development mediated by CLE signaling. In 2019, she was awarded an Ambizione SNSF grant and established her independent research group at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) to explore CLE signaling in root growth and stress adaptation. She also developed tomato root development as a model system to study peptide-receptor-mediated pathways. In 2025, she joined the University of Münster (Germany) as an Assistant Professor. Ora was awarded the prestigious Wübben Fellowship, which supports her research and onboarding measures during her tenure.

Prof. Dr. Gitta Coaker

Invited Speaker

https://plantpathology.ucdavis.edu/people/gitta-coaker

Professor Gitta Coaker is the John and Joan Fiddyment Endowed Chair in Agriculture at the University of California, Davis. She joined the faculty at the University of California, Davis in 2007. Dr. Coaker’s research program focuses on understanding kinase-mediated immune signaling and pathogen effector targets in both model and crop plants. Recent research investigates both immune receptor and pathogen variation. Her research also focuses on vascular pathogens, including vector-borne disease associated with Liberibacter species in tomato and potato. She was awarded the William H. Krauss Award for Research Excellence (2004), NSF Career Award (2011), Chancellor’s Fellow for Research Excellence (2013), Graduate Student Mentoring Award at the University of California, Davis (2020), and the Noel T. Keen Award for research excellence in Molecular Plant Pathology (2022).

Dr. Lena Mueller

Invited Speaker

https://www.salk.edu/scientist/lena-mueller/

Lena Mueller received her bachelor’s degree in biology and master’s degree in plant molecular biology from the University of Tübingen in Germany. She then earned her PhD in plant science and policy from the University of Zurich in Switzerland and completed her postdoctoral research at Cornell University’s Boyce Thompson Institute in New York. She most recently served as an assistant professor at the University of Miami before joining the Salk Institute. Dr. Mueller is a molecular plant biologist aiming to understanding how cells and organisms communicate with each other. Her lab studies such signaling mechanisms using plant interactions with mutualistic arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi as a model. Focusing on secreted peptides and their cognate receptors, her research aims to unravel molecular signaling pathways that allow plants to perceive and transmit information about fungus presence and symbiotic quality. In addition, her team studies how mutualistic fungi perceive plant signals and modulate host responses. Ultimately, her work will lay the groundwork to engineer crops that are optimal hosts for arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, with broad implications for agricultural sustainability. 

Prof. Dr. Julien Gronnier

Invited Speaker

https://www.professoren.tum.de/en/gronnier-julien

Prof. Dr. Gronnier researches cell biology aspects of Plant immunity, development and evolution. His group uses multi-disciplinary approaches in genetics, biochemistry and live-cell imaging and super resolution microscopy to decipher fundamental aspects of cell signaling, with a particular interest on the spatial and temporal regulation of membrane-based molecular events.

After a PhD on Cell biology at the Laboratoire de Biogénèse Membranaire (LBM, CNRS), Prof. Dr. Gronnier joined the group of Prof. Dr. Cyril Zipfel at the Sainsbury Laboratory and at the University of Zürich for his postdoctoral reseach on the Plant immune system. In 2021, Prof. Dr. Julien Gronnier started his independent research group, the NanoSignaling Lab, at the Zentrum für Molecular Biologie der Planzen (ZMBP, Tübingen) and joined the TUM as Professor for Plant Cell Biology in 2024.

Prof. Dr. Renier van der Hoorn

Invited Speaker

https://www.biology.ox.ac.uk/people/renier-van-der-hoorn

Renier Adrianus Leonardus van der Hoorn was born in Leiden in 1971 and was fascinated by plant biology from early childhood. He studied chemistry at Leiden University and focused soon on plant molecular biology and biochemistry. After his graduation in 1996, he started his PhD in Molecular Phytopathology (Wageningen University, Prof. Dr. Pierre de Wit), where he worked on the tomato Cf resistance proteins. He continued working on Cf proteins in Wageningen as a postdoc, and started his own research program by introducing and applying activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) in plants. To further develop ABPP he joined the phosphoproteomics group of Dr. Scott Peck for one year (Sainsbury lab, John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK). He initiated the Plant Chemetics lab in 2005 at the Max Planck Institutes of Cologne and Dortmund as part of the Chemical Genomics Centre of the Max Planck Society. His research group operated independently from the departments at the Max Planck Institutes while he trained twelve MSc students, nine PhD students, eleven postdocs and hosted over 30 visiting scientists. Since October 2013 he is Associate Professor and since 2017 Full Professor at the Department of Plant Sciences of the University of Oxford, and Tutor in Plant Sciences at Somerville College. Since 2022 he is an RS4 Professor at the Department of Biology and a Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College. His research focusses on improving transient protein expression in plants and using chemical proteomics and structural modelling to uncover novel host manipulation mechanisms employed by microbes when colonizing the apoplast.

Prof. Dr. Ari Sadanandom

Invited Speaker

https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/ari-sadanandom/

After attaining his PhD at the John Innes Centre for Plant Science Research and a postdoctoral position at The Sainsbury Laboratory, Ari Sadanandom was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Glasgow in 2003, and then as senior lecturer at Warwick University in 2009. At 2011 Ari Sadanandom moved to the University of Durham where he is currently Professor of Plant Molecular Sciences. Ari Sadanandom is also co-director of the Durham Centre for Crop Improvement technology, a multi-disciplinary research centre that works with Agriculture industry to develop technology that is effective in field conditions.

Ari Sadanandom’s research group wants to understand how protein modifications control plant growth and adaptation to their environment. Proteins can be modified by the addition of chemical groups and this process acts at the core of all molecular pathways in eukaryotes. The current focus of Ari’s research is to understand how protein modifications control plant growth and adaptation to their environment with a particular focus on stress tolerance and crops diseases.

Prof. Dr. Yan Wang

Invited Speaker

https://plant.njau.edu.cn/__local/4/11/11/AC45C4884A6A3E2014A1118F8FB_5C738849_7CA75.pdf

Prof. dr. Yan Wang received her PhD degree in the Laboratory of Phytopathology in Wageningen University (Prof. dr. Francine Govers), where she worked on functional analysis of plant lectin receptor-kinases in Phytophthora resistance. In 2015, she joined the College of Plant Protection in Nanjing Agricultural University, China. Her research focuses on plant-Phytophthora interactions in the apoplast, including the virulence function of Phytophthora effectors, their recognition by plant cell surface receptors, plant immune signaling pathways, and application of cell surface receptors in crop engineering.