Corresponding Member Award

2018

American Society of Plant Biologists have elected Barry Pogson as a Corresponding Member. Two other corresponding members were also elected in 2018, Hiroo Fukuda and fellow Canberran and CSIRO colleague TJ Higgins.  Previous RSB members who have received this award include Bob Robertson, Ralph Slatyer, Graham Farquhar, Murray Badger, Susanne von Caemmerer and John Evans.

This honour, initially given in 1932, provides life membership and Society publications to distinguished plant biologists from outside the United States. The honor is conferred by election on the annual ballot. The committee selects no more than three (3) candidates, and these are placed on the ballot for approval of corresponding membership by majority vote. The president notifies successful candidates of their election. Election of a corresponding member is to be considered each year, and held if warranted, provided the election will not increase the number of corresponding members beyond two (2) percent of the dues-paying membership.

Citation: 

Barry Pogson is Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology of the Australian National University, Canberra. He has made relevant contributions to the field of chloroplast retrograde signals and their roles in the regulation of plant responses to adverse environments, such as drought, and in identifying the genes for carotenoid synthesis, pigments required for photosynthetic performance during oxidative stress and development.

Barry is recognized as a highly cited scientist by ISI and by ASPB. He has carried out duties as senior editor for The Plant Cell for a decade, and he has been acknowledged as an ASPB Top Author. He has been engaged with the international plant community by being involved in the Global Plant Council, the Plant Science Research Network, and Plantae, as well as being a member of the Multinational Arabidopsis Steering Committee. With these activities Barry has actively contributed to policy and funding issues of relevance to the global plant science community and ASPB in particular. This includes development of white papers on nutritional enhancement of foods, organization of forums on biofortification and new breeding technologies, and the authoring of policy statements on genome editing. Significantly, members of his lab received multiple national and international awards for research, mentoring and teaching excellence, demonstrating Barry’s contributions to support future generations of plant scientists. Barry’s achievements endorse his merit as an excellent candidate for the ASPB Corresponding Member Award.