Category: Education

Plant Biology 2019 is fast approaching! If you’ll be attending for the first time, don’t worry—you’re in good company! You’ll be among 1400+ other plant biologists from nearly 40 countries, from grad students to professionals with 20+ years of experience, so no matter what you do, you’re…

Preparing graduate students and postdocs for diverse careers Changes in the workforce are challenging academia to prepare scientists to be adaptable and adept at communicating across boundaries. To meet these demands, the Plant Science Research Network (PSRN, plantae.org/PSRN) is shifting the focus…

PLOS One. Katharine Hubbard (@KEHplantsci) and Sonja Dunbar (@PlantSciSonja) are enthusiastic proponents of student-centered teaching, including guiding undergraduate students through the reading of scientific papers. In this new work they’ve evaluated how  undergraduate students compare to graduate…

In a new Commentary in Plant Physiology, Friesner et al. write a compelling vision for next-generation training for plant scientists. We asked three of the 39 authors, Joanna Friesner, Molly Megrew and Siobhan Brady, to tell us about their motivations and goals for writing this commentary. You…

Today’s biology students need to be trained to work with large datasets, meaning that mathematics, statistics and computer science should regularly be integrated into their biology courses. Williams et al. carried out a survey to determine the extent to which this occurs. Although 95% of respondents…

Earlier this year I gave a Plantae seminar on "Images for Impact" - simple, free tips about how to source and create images to use in your science writing and communicating. Here is the text of the handout I created to accompany the seminar. You can get this as a PDF here. The recorded webinar is here.…

Meet the newest member of the Teaching Tools in Plant Biology family, Phenomics of root system architecture: Measuring and analyzing root phenes -By Larry York and Guillaume Lobet. This teaching tool discusses the relatively young field of root system architecture quantification. It introduces the concepts…

We're delighted to welcome our newest class of Plantae Fellows, selected from an outstanding pool of applicants. This year's Plantae Fellows span from Graduate Student to Professor, and come from many countries and states, from Western Australia and Vietman in the east to California in the west. They…