ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Each year the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) awards travel grants to early career women investigators through a competitive process to attend the Plant Biology Annual Meeting. The goal of the Women's Young Investigator Travel Award (WYITA) program is to increase attendance of female investigators in their first five years as an independent scientist in academia, industry, or government at the annual meeting by providing travel funds. Selection is based first on the science and quality of the abstract submitted relative to the amount of time as a young investigator, second on a statement describing why travel should be supported, and third on financial need.
This year seven women were selected and each will receive a $1000 award to attend the Plant Biology Annual Meeting in Austin, TX. A list of recipients including their abstract titles follows.
Jane Geisler-Lee, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
"Phytotoxicity, Accumulation and Transport of Silver Nanoparticles by Arabidopsis thaliana"
Susanne Hoffmann-Benning, Michigan State University
"New Aspects of Phloem-Mediated Long-Distance Lipid Signaling in Plants"
Yan Lu, Western Michigan University
"Novel Transcriptional Regulation of Biosynthesis of Aspartate-Derived Amino Acids"
Mautusi Mitra, University of West Georgia
"Employing Functional Genomics to Study the Regulation of Tetrapyrrole Metabolism in the Green Microalga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii"
Karolina Mukhtar, University of Alabama at Birmingham
"Functions of Secretory Pathways and Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress in Plant Immunity"
Allison Phillips, Wisconsin Lutheran College
"Analysis of stunter1, a Maize Mutant with Reduced Gametophyte Size and Maternal Effects on Seed Development"
Rebecca Silady, Southern Connecticut State University
"grv2, an Embryo Defective Mutant, Functions in the Late Endocytic Pathway"
Congratulations to each of the 2012 WYITA award winners.
ASPB is a professional scientific society, headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, devoted to the advancement of the plant sciences worldwide. With a membership of nearly 5,000 plant scientists from throughout the United States and more than 50 other nations, the Society publishes two of the most widely cited plant science journals: The Plant Cell and Plant Physiology. For more information about ASPB, please visit http://www.aspb.org/. Also follow ASPB on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/myASPB and on Twitter @ASPB.