About Ronald

Pamela Ronald is Professor of Plant Pathology and Chair of the Plant Genomics Program at the University of California, Davis, where she studies the role that genes play in a plant’s response to its environment. She also serves as Director of Grass Genetics at the Joint Bioenergy Research Institute in Emeryville. Much of her work has focused on rice, a staple for 50% of the world’s people. Her laboratory has genetically engineered rice for resistance to diseases and flooding, both of which are serious problems of rice crops in Asia and Africa. Her work has been published in Science, Nature and other scientific periodicals and has also been featured in The New York Times, The Wall street Journal, Le Monde and on National Public Radio.

Ronald received a B.A. from Reed College, an M.A. from Stanford University, an M.S. from the University of Uppsala in Sweden and her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1985. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University from 1990-1992. In 1992, Ronald joined UC Davis as a faculty member where she served as Faculty Assistant to the Provost from 2004-2007. From 2003-2007 Ronald chaired the U.C. Davis Distinguished Women in Science seminar series, an event designed to support women's professional advancement in the sciences. In 1996, Ronald founded the Genetic Resources Recognition Fund, a UC Davis program to share benefits of biotechnology with less developed countries.

Ronald teaches a Genetics and Society course and a Sierra Nevada Flora field course. In 2004 with artist Ruth Santer, she established an innovative program, supported by the National Science Foundation, to introduce elementary school children to grass genetics and biofuels through science through botanical drawings, discussions and tile making.

Ronald chaired the American society of Plant Biologists Public Affairs Committee from 2003-2006. She has served on numerous competitive grant panels including the USDA Plant microbe interaction panel, the NSF Integrative Plant Biology panel, the NIH Cell Development and Function study section and has also served as a reviewer for the Gates Foundation and the Foundation of the NIH.  She currently serves on the editorial boards for Plant Physiology and a new journal, Plant Molecular Physiology, jointly launched by the Chinese Academy of Science, the Shanghai Institute of Biological Sciences (SIBS), and the UC Berkeley Center for Molecular Life Science.

Ronald was a Fulbright Fellow from 1984-1985, was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2000 and from 2002-2005 served as an Honorary Scientist at the Rural Development Administration of Korea. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a 2006 Fellow at the Davis Humanities Institute and a 2008 Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. In 2007, she and her colleagues were awarded the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research Science Award for Outstanding Scientific Article. In 2008 she and her colleagues were recipients of the USDA 2008 National Research Initiative Discovery Award for their work on submergence tolerant rice.

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