[Bpsfaculty] Fruits for thoughts

[Katayoon Dehesh]

Greetings all
Dear colleagues,

The recent departures of our colleagues from UCR, especially that of Xuemei' s has caused me much anxiety and concerns about our plant biology program.  Thus, I am writing to ask you to explore options as how to reinforce our powerful platform better aligned with todays' scientific and social needs. Patty has sent us emails in this regard and offered plans to discuss various options in the upcoming faculty meeting. However, I have taken the liberty of asking you to explore various options for discussion before the Monday meeting.

My personal thoughts are as follows:

1: It is perhaps prudent the change the name of the department from the current Botany Plant Sciences to just Plant Science department.
In addition, one could consider substituting CEPCEB with something like Plant Center as we no longer focus on cell biology nor do we house critical mass of cell biologists to justify the label.

2: Given the application of Crispr speeding up GMO acceptance, we could investigate rebuilding the transformation capabilities and follow up with a grant application to NSF to propose development of transformation technologies for a wide range of crops currently not amenable to transformation.

3- Brainstorming for development of collaborative projects deemed for DOE, NSF, ARPA ...etc., focused on plants for sustainability, carbon capture, biofilters etc.  Given the much expertise and interested parties in translational science preparation of a successful grant is feasible.
I truly believe that the UCR houses the best plant scientists well positioned to address exciting science and solve some aspects of the global concerns.
Let us pool together and engage in a constructive discussion.

Be powerful.

Katie


Katayoon (Katie) Dehesh
Director, Institute for Integrative Genome Biology, Distinguished Professor
Ernst and Helen Leibacher Endowed Chair in Botany and Plant Sciences
University of California, Riverside, CA 92521
Phone: (951) 827-6370;  Fax: (951) 827-5155


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