SBMate: From Acid Soil Fields to the Lab and Back (Part 1) by Leon Kochian

Leon Kochian - Director Robert W. Holley Center for Agriculture and Health, USDA-ARS, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Leon V. Kochian is Director of the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Robert W. Holley Center for Agriculture and Health on the Cornell University campus. He also is an Adjunct Professor in the Plant Biology Section and also the Soil and Crop Science Section at Cornell University, as well as an Adjunct Scientist at Boyce Thompson Institute He received his Bachelor’s degree in Botany at the University of California at Berkeley in 1978, and his Ph.D. in Plant Physiology at the University of California at Davis in 1984. In 1985 he took a position as a Plant Physiologist with USDA-ARS at the U. S. Plant, Soil and Nutrition Laboratory on the Cornell campus. Dr. Kochian became Director of the U.S. Plant, Soil and Nutrition Laboratory in 1997, and Director of the newly established USDA-ARS Robert Holley Center on the Cornell campus in 2007.
Dr. Kochian’s research deals with the molecular biology, physiology and genetics of mineral ion transport processes as they relate to mineral nutrient acquisition, plant response to abiotic environmental stresses, and the role of root architecture in nutrient acquisition efficiency. This involves the interdisciplinary application of research approaches from the fields of molecular biology, genetics, physiology, membrane biophysics and computer science to understand fundamental mechanisms and genes underlying mineral nutrient acquisition, tolerance to mineral deficiencies and mineral excess (toxic metals) in the soil, and the role of xc in efficient acquisition of water and mineral nutrients. Dr. Kochian is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) as well as an American Society of Plant Biologists Fellow, and is a member of the ARS Hall of Fame. Dr. Kochian was also recently named to Thomson Reuter’s list of 2015’s “Most Influential Scientific Minds”, a citation analysis identifying the scientists who have made the most significant global impact within their respective field of study over the past 11 years.