Petra Fromme received her B.S. (Vordiplom) and M.S. (Diplom) in Biochemistry from the Free University of Berlin, received her Ph.D. in chemistry and did her habilitation in physical chemistry at the Technical University of Berlin.
Past PMB Endowed Lectures
For a schedule of all Plant & Microbial Biology events, seminars, and lectures visit our calendar.
Nina Salama: Kustu Lecture: Bacterial body building: mechanisms and consequences of Helicobacter pylori morphology
Nina Salama studies Helicobacter pylori, a stomach bacterium that infects half the world’s population and is associated with ulcers and gastric cancer — the third leading cancer killer worldwide. Her team found that H. pylori’s unique corkscrew shape allows the bug to colonize the stomach by burrowing into the mucus lining where it is protected from the acidic environment. They found a set of...
Christoph Benning: Tsujimoto Lecture: Essential Roles of Plant Lipids in Photosynthesis and Plant Resilience
Christoph Benning is the Director of the Michigan State University Plant Research Laboratory and a University Distinguished Professor. He received his Masters at Albert-Ludwigs Universitaet in Germany and his Ph.D. at Michigan State. Research in the Benning laboratory focuses on lipid metabolism in photosynthetic organisms. One area of particular interest is the assembly and maintenance of the...
Elizabeth Sattely: Buchanan Lecture: Discovery and Engineering of Plant Chemistry for Plant and Human Health
Elizabeth Sattely is an Associate Professor and HHMI Investigator in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford and a Stanford ChEM-H Faculty Fellow. She also serves as an Honorary Adjunct Staff Scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Science. Dr. Sattely completed her graduate training at Boston College in organic chemistry and her postdoctoral studies in biochemistry at Harvard Medical...
Matthew Fisher: Taylor White Lecture: Tracking and tackling emerging fungal threats
Matthew Fisher is a Professor of Fungal Disease Epidemiology and Faculty of Medicine at the School of Public Health, at Imperial College London. His research uses an evolutionary framework to investigate the biological and environmental factors that are driving emerging fungal diseases in both human, wildlife and plant species. In 2005 he received the Berkeley Award from the British Mycological...
Francis-André Wollman: Arnon Lecture: The chloroplast: a site of post-endosymbiotic innovations in gene expression and protein assembly
Dr. Wollman is the Director of the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique in Paris, France. His work is dedicated to the study of the biogenesis and the function of the photosynthetic apparatus, which is present in the network of internal membranes of the chloroplast, the thylacoids.
Fitnat Yildiz: Kustu Lecture: Mechanisms and Consequences of Biofilm Formation
Fitnat Yildiz's lab at UCSC focuses on understanding molecular mechanisms of biofilm formation, c-di-GMP signaling, and environmental stress response. Dr. Yildiz received her B.S. from Hacettepe University, Turkey followed by her Ph.D. from Indiana University. She was a recipient of the Ellison Medical foundation New Scholar Award in Global Infectious Disease and is a Fellow of the American Academy...
Noah Fierer: Tsujimoto Lecture: Searching for simplicity amidst the complexity of the soil microbiome
Noah Fierer. The Fierer Lab explores the distribution and roles of microscopic organisms in diverse environments and the relevance of microbes to the health and function of ecosystems, plants, and animals (including humans).
Nidhi Rawat: Buchanan Lecture: Fusarium graminearum: Can we really outsmart the sly pathogen?
Nidhi Rawat. Genetic resistance to pathogens is the most crucial strategy to overcome this challenge. Using Fusarium graminearum as a model, we are investigating the broad-spectrum strategies that the plants use to resist the pathogen spread.
Nancy Keller: Taylor-White Lecture: Chemical Intelligence of Fungi
Nancy Keller's research focus lies in genetically dissecting those aspects of Aspergillus spp. that render them potent pathogens and superb natural product machines. We are interested in elucidating the mechanism of fungal sporulation and host/pathogen interactions; processes intimately linked to secondary metabolite (e.g. mycotoxin) production.