Ronald Biography
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Pamela C. Ronald |
Ronald high resolution image #2, (photo credit Debbie Aldridge, University of California, Davis)
Pamela Ronald is Professor of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis, where she studies the role that genes play in a plant's response to its environment. 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. She also serves as Vice President for the Feedstocks Division and Director of Grass Genetics at the Joint Bioenergy Institute.
In 1995, the Ronald Laboratory isolated and characterized the XA21 pattern recognition receptor (Song et al. Science 1995: Lee et al., Science 2009). Subsequent discoveries in flies ( Lemaitre et al., 1996), humans (Medzhitov, et al 1997), mice (Poltorak et al, 1998), and Arabidopsis ( Gomez-Gomez, 2000) revealed that animals and other plant species also carry membrane-anchored receptors with striking structural similarities to XA21 and that these receptors also play key roles recognition of microbial signatures and host defense. 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, Popular Mechanics, CNN 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. She currently serves as a member of the Board of Advisors, Poptech Science and Public Leadership Fellows Program.
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 and Host Interaction with Bacterial Pathogens study sections and has also served as a reviewer for the Gates Foundation and the Foundation of the NIH. She currently serves on several editorial boards including Plant Physiology and Plant Molecular Physiology, a new journal 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 and was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2000. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a 2008 Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. In 2008 she and her colleagues were recipients of the USDA 2008 National Research Initiative Discovery Award for their work on submergence tolerant rice. In 2009, they were finalists for the 2009 World Technology Award for Environment and nominees for the Biotech Humanitarian Award.
Ronald is co-author with her husband, Raoul Adamchak, an organic farmer, of "Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetic and the Future of Food". "Tomorrow's Table" was selected as one of the best books of 2008 by Seed Magazine and the Library Journal. In 2009, Ronald received the National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Journalism Award. She writes an award-winning blog on food, farming and genetics.
Interviews, Lectures and Profiles
