UBC Botanical Garden is pleased to announce that Dr. Loren Rieseberg has joined the Garden as Associate Director, Research. As Professor and Canada Research Chair in Plant Evolutionary Genomics in the Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, UBC, Professor Rieseberg takes over from Dr. Sean Graham who became the Head of the Department on July 1.
Focusing on sunflowers, Rieseberg’s lab employs a combination of ecological and genomic approaches to study the origins and evolution of new species. The research exploits the genetic diversity of wild sunflower relatives including extremophile species (plants that live in conditions of extreme temperature, acidity, alkalinity, or chemical concentration) to understand weed evolution and crop domestication, and to provide genomic tools for crop improvement.
Research Abstract
Speciation, domestication, conservation biology, and weed evolution.
Academic History
Fellow, Royal Society of London
Fellow, Royal Society of Canada
Canada Research Chair in Plant Evolutionary Genomics
M.S. University of Tennessee 1984
Ph.D. Washington State University 1987
Assistant Professor, Claremont Graduate School 1987-1993
Associate/Full/Distinguished Professor, Indiana University 1993-
In 2003, Rieseberg was named a MacArthur Fellow.
In 2013 the Linnean Society of London awarded Rieseberg the Darwin-Wallace Medal for achieving major advances in evolutionary biology.
For more information on Dr. Rieseberg’s work, please visit the Rieseberg Lab website on plant evolutionary genomics.
Submitted by Garden Communications, July 8, 2016
