After three years of not being able to meet in person, you can tell from all the smiling faces how pleased we were to see each other and to be able to discuss the amazing science that we are doing towards generating C4 rice #climatechange


After three years of not being able to meet in person, you can tell from all the smiling faces how pleased we were to see each other and to be able to discuss the amazing science that we are doing towards generating C4 rice #climatechange
From today, Dr Ermakova will be starting in her new position at Monash University, running her own group. We would all like to wish her the very best of luck.
Dr Maria Ermakova, of the Australian National University, will be presented with the Peter Goldacre Medal at the ComBio conference in September. Everyone in the C4 Rice Project would like to congratulate Maria on this award. A link to Maria’s bio, describing her work, can be found here.
The C4 Rice Project annual meeting was again held online this year, and has brought another challenging year to an end. Yet again, the team has managed to accomplish a great deal in difficult circumstances. This is thanks to the hard work of each individual team member, supported by continual communication between several groups across various time-zones. We are very grateful for the support given by our External Advisors – Dan Voytas, Dirk Inzé and Bill Taylor, our Program Manager – Neil Hausmann – and of course to Jane Langdale for her excellent leadership.
Congratulations to everyone for getting us to this point. We hope you have a very restful, well-earned, break.
Congratulations to Mark Stitt, John Lunn (both Max Planck Institute), Robert Furbank (Australian National University) Dan Voytas (University of Minnesota) and Dirk Inzé (Ghent University) who have been named in the Highly Cited Researchers list of 2021. The list recognizes the world’s most influential researchers, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science.
Professor John Lunn, Senior Research Scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, was recently appointed Corresponding Member of the Australian Society of Plant Scientists (see the list of Corresponding Members here).
Outstanding contributions to science have been recognised by the Australian Academy of Science with 24 of Australia’s leading scientists receiving a 2021 honorific award (see more here).
We would like to congratulate Professor Susanne von Caemmerer, who has been awarded the 2021 Inaugural Suzanne Cory Medal. See a short video here, to meet Susanne and learn more about her research.
The C4 Rice Project annual meeting this year was held online, over many different time-zones. It was great to see everyone, and to welcome new members of the team. Although an in-person meeting would have been preferable, the meeting proved to be a productive one. This year has brought plenty of challenges; however, significant progress has been made on the project. This is thanks to an extremely talented, and dedicated, team of scientists.
Let’s hope 2021 brings continuing success… and fingers crossed we’ll have the opportunity to come together in Bangkok for an even better, and more sociable, meeting.
Professor Jane Langdale, of the University of Oxford, has been admitted as Corresponding Member of the Australian Academy of Science, in recognition of her outstanding contribution to science. Professor Langdale is one of two new Corresponding Members – the other being Nobel Laureate Professor Erwin Neher – to join just 33 Corresponding Members of the Academy.
Congratulations, Professor Jane Langdale FAA!
See more here.
We are saddened to learn that Udo Gowik, who worked with us in Phases I and II of the project, passed away last weekend. He was a great collaborator and friend to many of us.