Speakers

The International Phytobiomes Conference 2024 will bring together a broad community of U.S. and international scientists from the public and private sector as well as agricultural stakeholders.

The Conference program will cover a wide range of topics related to phytobiomes and the list of speakers & panelists below reflects the interdisciplinarity of phytobiome science.

Plenary Speakers – Invited Speakers – Other Speakers – Panelists

Plenary Speakers

Gwyn Beattie

Iowa State University, US

Gwyn Beattie is a professor at Iowa State University in the US where she holds an endowed Chair as the Robert Earle Buchanan Distinguished Professor of Bacteriology. Her research is exploring the mechanistic drivers of plant-bacteria-environment interactions, including how the abiotic environment dictates bacterial strategies for success on plant leaves and bacterial community development on plant roots. She is also investigating insect-vectored plant pathogens, with an interest in how climate change may be contributing to the emergence of plant diseases. Gwyn Beattie is a Fellow of the American Phytopathological Society, the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Annual Review of Phytopathology, and a founding member of the Board of Directors for the International Phytobiomes Alliance.

Talk Title: Exploring the roles of climate and plant-insect-bacteria interactions in emerging plant diseases

Samiran Banerjee

North Dakota State University, US

Samiran Banerjee is Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiological Sciences at North Dakota State University. Previously, he held research positions at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia and Agroscope in Switzerland. Banerjee is a microbial ecologist with expertise in omics and machine learning approaches, and experience in plant-soil-microbe interactions. His research utilizes a combination of high-throughput sequencing, synthetic biology, and advanced statistical approaches to understand the rules that govern the microbiome assembly and microbe-microbe interactions. He also examines microbiome recruitment into the rhizosphere and roots, and how various abiotic and biotic factors alter the structure and functions of plant and soil microbiomes. He serves as a reviewer for several federal and international funding agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Science Foundation, and Genome Canada.

Talk Title: The role of microbiomes in One Health

Terrence Bell

University of Toronto, CA

Terrence Bell is a soil microbial ecologist and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto – Scarborough. He is based in the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences, cross-appointed in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, and is a member of the Sustainable Food and Farming Futures Cluster. His first faculty appointment was at Penn State University from 2017-2022, after working as a postdoctoral fellow at l’Université de Montréal and Cornell University. He earned his BSc from Queen’s University, his MSc from Western University, and his PhD from McGill University. He has published >60 scientific articles, has received funding from varied sources, including the USDA, DOE, NSERC, and Genome Canada, and is currently a Senior Editor for ISME Communications. His work explores the constraints on microbial niche breadth and the extent to which niche breadth can be modified by new environmental pressures. This work has implications for both the intentional manipulation of microbes and microbiomes (e.g. microbial breedings) and incidental manipulations (e.g. global change factors).

Talk Title: The influence of near-term conditioning on microbial survival and function in phytobiomes

Francesca Cotrufo

Colorado State University, US

Francesca Cotrufo is a Professor in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at Colorado State University. She is a soil ecologist and biogeochemist, internationally recognized for her work in the field of litter decomposition and soil organic matter dynamics, and in the use of isotopic methodologies in these studies. She strives to advance understanding of the mechanisms and drivers of formation and persistence of soil organic matter, and their response to global environmental changes and disturbances. She uses this understanding to improve modelling of soil C-climate feedback to inform climate and land use policy and management. She also pursues applied research to innovate and increase throughput of soil carbon and health testing, and to propose soil management practices that regenerate healthy soils and mitigate climate change. As a scientist fully aware of the current and future challenges expecting humanity, Francesca Cotrufo is interested in promoting research education, and outreach activities to help mitigating the current human impacts on the Earth System and assure a better sustainable path for humanity. To this end, with other colleagues at CSU, she recently formed the Soil Carbon Solution Center.

Talk Title: Regenerating soil organic matter for the benefit of climate and food production: A systemic multifaceted approach

Catherine Feuillet

Inari, US

Catherine Feuillet received her PhD in 1993 from the Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse (France) and completed her postdoctoral studies at the University of Zurich, focusing on the isolation of disease resistance genes and the genome structure and evolution of wheat and barley. Following her passion for wheat science, in 2004 Catherine was appointed research director by the INRA (French National Agricultural Research Institute) to lead and develop wheat genomics projects. Catherine joined Bayer Crop Science in 2013 and became the head of trait research.

Since 2018, she has been the Chief Scientific Officer at Inari, the SEEDesign™ company working to solve the critical issues of food security and sustainability by designing nature-positive seed. Catherine leads a group of ~100 scientists (located in Cambridge, MA, USA and Ghent, Belgium) working to advance a technology platform that integrates A.I.-powered predictive design and advanced multiplex gene editing tools to develop seeds that meet the world’s needs – all in far less time and with much greater precision and far fewer resources than current approaches.

As one of the founders of the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium, Catherine was elected the French “golden woman of the year for research” in 2008. The following year, she received the “Prix Foulon” from the French Academy of Sciences for her achievements in wheat research. Her recognitions also include the Legion of Honour (2010), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2011) and the “Prix J. Dufrenoy” from the French Academy of Agriculture (2012).

Catherine is dedicated to developing and guiding the next generation of scientists, having supervised the work of more than 30 master’s, PhD and postdoc scientists. Her work has been published in more than 130 peer-reviewed journals and books.

Talk Title: Solving our food system challenges through integrated innovation

James Lowenberg-DeBoer

Harper Adams University, UK

James Lowenberg-DeBoer holds the Elizabeth Creak Chair in Agri-Tech Applied Economics at Harper Adams University (HAU), Newport, Shropshire, UK. He is responsible for economics in the Hands Free Farm (HFF) team at HAU. He is also past president of the International Society of Precision Agriculture (ISPA) and was co-editor of the journal Precision Agriculture from 2016 to 2022.

His research focuses on the economics of agricultural technology, especially precision agriculture and crop robotics. Lowenberg-DeBoer’s research and outreach is founded in hands-on experience in agriculture, including production of corn and soybeans in NW Iowa in the USA.

Talk Title: Envisioning digital management of phytobiome systems

Invited Speakers

Rebecca Bart

Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, US

Becky Bart is a Member, Principal Investigator and VP of Research at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. Her research focuses on the complicated interactions between plants, microbes and the environment and encompasses disease-causing microbes such as bacteria and viruses and the less well understood multitude of beneficial microbes that associate with plants. Becky’s team applies computational, lab and field-based methods to dissect the complicated web of these interactions and to understand how they ultimately affect plant health and the sustainability of agriculture. She also serves as the Director of the Subterranean Influences on Carbon and Nitrogen (SINC) Center. At the SINC Center, Becky and her colleagues are working to improve the sustainability of agriculture by developing technologies to track the flow of nitrogen and carbon across plant roots, discovering novel beneficial microbes, and understanding the genetic mechanisms that influence these interactions. Through this work they are developing technologies to decrease the use of nitrogen fertilizer without the loss of crop productivity. Becky received a B.A. from Reed College, her PhD from the University of California, Davis, was a NIFA postdoctoral scholar at the University of California. In 2019, she received the Innovation Award from the St. Louis Academy of Sciences.

Talk Title: Novel microbes and newly assembled syncoms to promote sustainable agriculture

Laramy Enders

Purdue University, US

Laramy Enders is an Associate Professor in the Department of Entomology at Purdue University, where she leads the Plant-Insect Microbiomes lab. She has an interdisciplinary background in ecology, evolutionary biology, population genetics, plant-insect interactions, molecular defenses and stress responses, and insect microbial symbionts. Her research program employs a systems-level approach to investigate relationships between insect herbivores, host plants and their microbial partners to improve understanding of ecological factors driving microbiome assembly in agricultural environments and apply this knowledge to support crop health and pest management. Her work spans several areas including development of precision microbiome management practices in agriculture, microbe-mediated protection against insect damage across diverse crop plants, and how insect microbial symbionts influence transmission of plant pathogens that limit agricultural production.

Talk Title: Engineering beneficial agricultural microbiomes to improve protection against insect pests

Richard Lankau

University of Wisconsin- Madison, US

Richard Lankau is Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research group seeks to understand how the structure of microbial communities in and around plant roots responds to external forces, like climate change and agricultural management, and effects plant health and ecosystem function. They are interested in understanding fundamental relationships between microbial community diversity, abundance, and community structure and plant growth and soil processes. They are also interested in practical applications to 1) predict agronomic outcomes from the state of soil ecosystems, 2) capitalize on existing variation in microbial interactions to promote restoration and agronomic goals, and 3) restore microbial diversity and function to soils through management interventions.

Talk Title: Capitalizing on microbial communities to meet restoration and agricultural goals in changing climates

Angelica Miraples

University of Guelph, CA

Angelica Miraples completed her BSc at the University of Toronto (Canada), St. George, with majors in cell and molecular biology, and human biology. She earned her MSc at the same institution, in the Department of Cell and Systems Biology, where she worked with Arabidopsis to investigate the functional redundancy of a subset of non-selective Ca²⁺-permeable channels, known as cyclic nucleotide gated-ion channels (CNGCs), under various physiological stimuli. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at the University of Guelph (Canada), in the Department of Plant Agriculture. Her research focuses on the maize microbiome, specifically on understanding the origins of the maize pollen microbiome and the mechanisms that may permit vertical transmission from pollen to progeny.

Talk Title: Investigating the microbiome of early maize pollen progenitor cells and its subsequent transmission to mature maize pollen

Other Speakers

Alhagie K. Cham

University of Tennessee, US

Alhagie K. Cham is a dedicated Plant Pathologist with extensive experience in plant-microbe interactions, bioinformatics, and sustainable agriculture. He earned his Doctorate in Plant Pathology and Biotechnology from The Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, with a dissertation focusing on resistance metabolite production in tomato. He also holds a Master’s degree in Entomology and Biocontrol from The Autonomous University of Nayarit, Mexico, and a Bachelor’s in Agronomy from the University of Ciego de Avila, Cuba.

Currently, Alhagie is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, where his research explores genomic and metagenomic approaches to understand plant-pathogen-microbe dynamics, particularly in sweetpotato and maize. His expertise spans molecular techniques, field trials, and laboratory management. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and actively contributes to academic communities, including the American Phytopathological Society and the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology.

With a strong foundation in both fundamental and applied agricultural sciences, Alhagie is committed to advancing sustainable crop production and improving plant health through innovative research and biotechnological approaches.

Talk Title: Metagenomic profiles reveal that a mild constitutive defense response in maize maintains microbial diversity, limits pathogens and promotes beneficial microbes

Maede Faghihinia

Iowa State University, US

Maede (Madi) Faghihinia is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Iowa State University, specializing in Microbial Ecology, Metagenomics, and Plant-Microbiome Interactions. She earned her PhD in Environmental Sciences from the University of Liverpool and has conducted research at the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her expertise includes studying microbial interactions, with a particular focus on nitrifying bacteria and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, and their role in soil nutrient cycling and plant health. She employs cutting-edge techniques, such as stable-isotope probing and nanopore sequencing to investigate how microbial communities contribute to plant nutrient uptake and ecosystem health.

Talk Title: Central role of Thaumarcheota in microbial network cohesion and robustness in agricultural cropping systems

Veronica Escalante

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, US

Veronica Escalante is a microbe enthusiast and postdoctoral researcher at Berkeley Lab focused on plant-microbe interactions. Currently, her research employs engineered plants and microorganisms to investigate how specific plant root exudates, like aromatic acids, modulate plant-microbial interactions in the rhizosphere. She enjoys thinking about host-microbe interactions in different contexts and is always excited about exploring ways microbes can support plant health and productivity in agricultural and bioenergy systems.

Talk Title: Unraveling the role of aromatic acids in plant-microbe interactions

Adrien Fremont

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, US

Adrien Fremont is a Postdoctoral Researcher specializing in Rhizosphere Meta’omics at Berkeley Lab. His research focuses on unravelling the intricate biochemical cross-talk between plants and microorganisms in the rhizosphere, aiming to develop strategies for climate-resilient agriculture. Several third-party funded projects have contributed to improve our knowledge of the effects of biological control methods against diseases caused by soil-borne pathogens. This includes the impact of applied beneficial microbes on plant health under consideration of their rhizosphere competence and their effects on the rhizosphere microbiome. In addition, we aim to answer the question how long-term farming practice affect the performance of microbial inoculants and thus plant health at field scale.

Talk Title: The chemical toolkit of cover crops: Engineering belowground chemical and microbial diversity

Rita Grosch

Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops (IGZ), DE

Rita Grosch‘s main research areas are plant–pathogen interactions with a particular emphasis on soil-borne pathogens such as Rhizoctonia solani and Fusarium spp. Soil-borne pathogens are difficult to control and disease incidence and severity are affected by various (a)biotic stressors. Therefore, the research goal is to determine how (a)biotic stressors affect diseases caused by soil-borne pathogens and how severity can be reduced by management practices. The group studies the impact of the stressors and management practices on plant responses at molecular and metabolomic level.
Because of the importance of soil and plant associated microorganisms for plant productivity and health, the group aim to answer the questions how environmental conditions (e.g. drought) affect plant-microbe interaction and seek to understand the underlying mechanisms of supporting measures towards plant tolerance to stressors.
Several third-party funded projects have contributed to improve our knowledge of the effects of biological control methods against diseases caused by soil-borne pathogens. This includes the impact of applied beneficial microbes on plant health under consideration of their rhizosphere competence and their effects on the rhizosphere microbiome. In addition, we aim to answer the question how long-term farming practice affect the performance of microbial inoculants and thus plant health at field scale.

Talk Title: Impact of farming practices on microbial community in the rhizosphere of winter wheat under consideration of plant fitness

Laura Mathieu

INRAE, FR

Laura Mathieu is a third-year PhD candidate at the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE), based at the Plant Health Institute of Montpellier (PHIM). Her research interests include ecophysiology, quantitative genetics, multi-omics, plant-microbe interactions and crop mixtures. She is particularly interested in understanding how diversity affects agro-ecosystem services. During her PhD, she studied how plant-plant interactions modulate disease susceptibility in intraspecific wheat mixtures. She has investigated the genetic basis of these interactions, examined how wheat plants respond to their neighbors, and analyzed the below-ground signals exchanged between plants within these mixtures.

Talk Title: Plant-plant interactions modulate wheat severity to Septoria Tritici Blotch in some specific mixtures through intergenomic epistatic interactions and transcriptomic-metabolomic changes

Melanie Medina López

The Ohio State University, US

Melanie Medina López earned her BSc in Industrial Microbiology from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, with a focus on food science and technology. Currently, she is in the final year of her PhD in Plant Pathology at The Ohio State University, where she is co-advised by Dr. Soledad Benitez Ponce and Dr. Horacio Lopez-Nicora. Her research examines spatial and temporal shifts in fungal communities associated with the soybean cyst nematode (SCN) using culture-dependent and independent techniques. She is particularly interested in the study of agricultural microbiomes to inform management practices and identify biocontrol agents that can support the management of plant pathogens.

Talk Title: Within field spatial variability of soil fungal communities and soybean cyst nematode interactions

Ally Miners

University of Waterloo, CA

Ally Miners completed her BSc at the University of Waterloo (Canada), specializing in microbiology and plant biology. During this time, she began investigating relationships between plants and symbiotic bacteria under the mentorship of Trevor Charles, PhD. Currently, she is a first-year MSc student at the University of Waterloo (Canada), in the Department of Biology. Her research focuses on enriching 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC) deaminase-producing bacteria in the plant microbiome to improve plant growth. She is interested in leveraging plant-beneficial bacteria to reduce synthetic fertilizer dependence and promote sustainable agriculture practices.

Talk Title: Sustainable biofertilizer development with ACC enrichment communities to maximize plant growth

Mallory Morgan

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US

Mallory Morgan is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Computational and Predictive Biology Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, working under Dr. Daniel Jacobson. Her research leverages genetic data from single nuclei through population scales, using computational systems biology approaches to uncover genetic mechanisms influencing plant phenotypes. Mallory’s current work through the Plant Microbe Interfaces Scientific Focus Area investigates the genetic mechanisms of microbial colonization in Populus trichocarpa, which supports the prioritization of gene candidates for experimental validation. She completed her PhD at the University of Florida in the Forest Genomics Lab with Dr. Gary Peter, where her work focused on identifying candidate genes to enhance pine feedstocks for bioenergy and climate resilience. Her doctoral research was supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a DOE SCGSR award.

Talk Title: MENTOR identifies functional relationships among P. trichocarpa genes associated with fungal colonization

Daniel Naylor

NewLeaf Symbiotics, US

Daniel Naylor is a Senior Scientist in Plant Biology at NewLeaf Symbiotics. His research background has been in examining plant and soil microbiome responses to abiotic stresses such as drought or nitrogen deficiency, as well as leveraging beneficial microbes to improve crop performance. His projects at NewLeaf include testing a diverse array of microbes for their ability to stimulate growth, mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, or improve drought tolerance in a variety of row crops. He obtained his PhD in Plant Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, and his Bachelor in Science in Biotechnology from the University of California, Davis.

Talk Title: Methanotrophs for methane mitigation and growth promotion in rice

Anne Phillips

NewLeaf Symbiotics, US

Anne Phillips is a Senior Staff Scientist at NewLeaf Symbiotics. She is a plant pathologist and microbiologist with a passion for sustainable agriculture solutions. Her current focus is on the field research development of biocontrol and biostimulant products on specialty crops. She received her PhD from Washington University in Saint Louis where she studied the re-emergence of cotton bacterial blight under the mentorship of Rebecca Bart, PhD at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.

Talk Title: Developing a microbial product for tomato with Pink Pigmented Facultative Methylotrophs (PPFMs): A field technical development journey

Jose Sanchez-Gallego

University of Wisconsin-Madison, US

Jose A. Sanchez-Gallego completed his BSc at Universidad ICESI in Cali, Colombia. While majoring in biology, he worked at the plant molecular physiology lab investigating nitrogen fixing bacteria populations associated with wild-rice species and characterizing their aluminum-stress tolerance. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin – Madison (USA), in the Department of Plant Pathology. One of his research lines focuses on the use of the disaccharide trehalose as a potential plant biostimulant, specifically with the aim of using it to fight bacterial wilt caused by Ralstonia solanacearum on tomato.

Talk Title: Trehalose, an environmentally friendly low-cost biostimulant to increase plant stress tolerance

Asha Thapa

University of Louisiana at Monroe, US

Asha Thapa is currently pursuing a Master’s in Biology at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. She earned a Bachelor’s in Agriculture from Tribhuvan University in Nepal. She is working on the role of Trichoderma afroharzianum T22 on the host transcriptome and helper microbes that aid pea plants in coping with iron (Fe) deficiency in soil. Her research showed that T22 colonizes pea roots in a host-specific manner, improving growth and iron accumulation in Fe-deficient peas. RNA-seq analysis identified differentially expressed genes linked to flavonoid biosynthesis, mineral transport, and redox homeostasis in T22-inoculated roots. Interestingly, T22 restored the abundance of rhizobia, along with the induction of nitrogen-fixing genes in nodules, suggesting a connection between T22 and rhizobia under Fe starvation. Furthermore, T22-mediated Fe mitigation depends on flavonoid-driven symbiosis and rhizobial restoration, likely stemming from their interactions rather than just improved Fe status in plants. Amplicon sequencing further showed the enrichment of several bacterial (Pseudomonas, Acidovorax) and fungal (Pseudallescheria) genera that may act as helper microbes to T22, collectively promoting Fe deficiency tolerance in garden pea. These findings may advance microbiome strategies to alleviate Fe deficiency in peas and other legumes.

Talk Title: Trichoderma afroharzianum T22 induces rhizobia and flavonoid through systemic signaling to combat Fe deficiency in garden pea

Ilksen Topcu

Texas A&M University, US

Ilksen Topcu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology at Texas A&M University. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Plant Protection and Master of Science in Entomology in Turkiye. Her Ph.D. research focuses on using metagenomic and metabarcoding approaches to examine the composition and functions of microbial communities in the rhizosphere and leaf endosphere of ancestral maize and modern inbred lines. Her research aims to understand the dynamics and co-evolutionary relationships of these microbes during the process of maize domestication and breeding. Her goals are to develop biopesticides and biofertilizers to enhance maize crop productivity by utilizing microbial inocula from wild maize plants and transferring these beneficial microorganisms to modern maize varieties, thereby improving pest defenses and reducing the reliance on harmful pesticides.

Talk Title: Domestication of Zea mays results in divergent impacts on leaf endosphere microbiota

Chuntao Yin

North Central Agricultural Research Laboratory, USDA-ARS, US

Chuntao Yin is a research microbiologist at the USDA-ARS North Central Agricultural Research Laboratory in Brookings, South Dakota. Her research team seeks to develop and promote soil, crop, and pest management practices that are ecologically sustainable while maintaining producer profitability. Her research focuses on understanding the interactions between agricultural management practices and soil microbial communities. She unitizes lab, field-based, and computational methods to identify key management factors driving soil microbiomes that support the productivity, efficiency, and resilience of cropping systems. She is also interested in understanding the complicated interactions between plants, phytopathogens, soil microbes, and the environment, as well as developing suppressive soils to improve plant health and resilience.

Talk Title: Cover crop effects on soybean health and associated rhizosphere microbiome