Virtual Event
Date: 18 December 2025
Time: 11:00am EST
Join us for a conversation with Pamela Ronald, a universally recognized leader in plant genetics, a food security pioneer, and an enthusiastic advocate for sustainable agriculture. We will discuss the challenges she faced throughout her career and what skills she needed to achieve groundbreaking advancements in plant genetics, to stay true to her purpose, and rise to the top of her profession.
About the invitee
Pamela Ronald is a universally recognized scientist for research in infectious disease biology and environmental stress tolerance as well as for science advocacy. Her isolation of the rice Xa21 immune receptor in 1995 and of a novel microbial immunogen in 2015 revealed a new mechanism with which plants and animals detect and respond to infection. She is also known for her leading role in isolation of the rice Submergence Tolerance 1 gene. Her research facilitated the development of high yielding Sub1 rice varieties grown by more than six million subsistence farmers in India and Bangladesh. She founded the UC Davis Interdisciplinary Forum for Advancing Science Learning to provide the next generation of scientists with the training they need to become effective communicators.
Ronald was named a National Geographic Innovator and one of Grist’s 50 innovators who will lead us toward a more sustainable future. She received the USDA National Research Institute Discovery Award, the Louis Malassis International Scientific Prize for Agriculture and Food, and the Tech Award for innovative use of technology to benefit humanity. In 2019, she received the American Society of Plant Biologists Leadership Award, an honorary doctorate from the Swedish Agricultural University and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2020 she was named a World Agricultural Prize Laureate by the Global Confederation of Higher Education Associations for Agricultural and Life Sciences and, 2022, Ronald was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture. She was named one of the world’s most influential scientific minds by Thomson Reuters and one of the world’s 100 most influential people in biotechnology by Scientific American. Ronald is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.