35 Facts About Pamela Ronald

Pamela Christine Ronald was born on January 29,1961 and is an American plant pathologist and geneticist.

Pamela Ronald is a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and conducts research at the Genome Center at the University of California, Davis and a member of the Innovative Genomics Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

Pamela Ronald serves as Director of Grass Genetics at the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, California.

Pamela Ronald's laboratory has genetically engineered rice for resistance to diseases and tolerance to flooding, which are serious problems of rice crops in Asia and Africa.

Pamela Christine Ronald was born on January 29,1961, to Patricia and Robert Ronald of San Mateo, California.

Robert Pamela Ronald, a Jewish refugee who was born Robert Rosenthal, wrote a memoir entitled Last Train to Freedom.

From an early age, Pamela Ronald spent time backpacking in the Sierra Nevada wilderness, sparking her love for plant biology.

Pamela Ronald realized that analyzing and studying plants could be a profession after witnessing botanists in the field during a summer time hike with her brother.

Pamela Ronald already knew she loved plants after time spent helping her mother tend to them in the garden.

Pamela Ronald was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University from 1990 to 1992 in the laboratory of Steven Tanksley.

In 1992, Pamela Ronald joined UC Davis as a faculty member.

From 2003 to 2007 Pamela Ronald chaired the UC Davis Distinguished Women in Science seminar series, an event designed to support women's professional advancement in the sciences.

Pamela Ronald served as Faculty Assistant to the Provost from 2004 to 2007.

Pamela Ronald is a vocal advocate for science and for sustainable agriculture.

Pamela Ronald's laboratory has been instrumental in the development of rice that is disease-resistant and flood-tolerant.

Pamela Ronald hypothesized that Xa21 encoded a single protein that recognized a conserved microbial determinant.

Pamela Ronald launched a project with CGIAR to allow noncommercial use of the gene for nonprofit purposes and released the gene to IRRI for the development of rice strains to be grown in developing nations.

In 2009 and 2011, Pamela Ronald's laboratory reported on the discovery of a bacterial protein that they believed was the activator of Xa21-mediated immunity.

In 2013, Pamela Ronald retracted both scientific papers, notifying the scientific community that two bacterial strains had been mixed up.

For two more years Pamela Ronald's laboratory repeated critical experiments and carried out new ones.

In 2015, Pamela Ronald published the discovery of the predicted ligand of XA21, a sulfated peptide called RaxX, correcting their mistake and bringing the research team full circle.

Pamela Ronald has sought ways to recognize source nations and institutions that have contributed to important scientific advances, such as the West African country of Mali, the source of the Xa21 rice gene.

In 1996, Pamela Ronald founded the Genetic Resources Recognition Fund at UC Davis.

In 1996, Pamela Ronald began a project with rice breeder David Mackill who had recently demonstrated that tolerance to complete submergence mapped to the Submergence tolerance 1 Quantitative trait locus.

Pamela Ronald's laboratory led the positional cloning of the Sub1 QTL, revealed that it carried three ethylene response transcription factors and demonstrated that one of the ERFs, which she designated Sub1A, was upregulated rapidly in response to submergence and conferred robust tolerance to submergence in transgenic plants.

Pamela Ronald co-authored the book Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics and the Future of Food with her husband, Raoul Adamchak.

Pamela Ronald serves on several institute boards, advisory committees and editorial boards, including Current Biology, the PLOS Biology Editorial Board, and the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Pamela Ronald is a Member of the National Academies' Committee on Understanding and Addressing Misinformation about Science and a founding Member of the Advisory Council of the National Food Museum.

Pamela Ronald serves as chair of the Scientific and Technological Committee, Priority Research and Equipment Programme in Advanced Plant Breeding, at the French National Research Agency.

Pamela Ronald is a former Chair of Section G, Biological Sciences, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the American Society of Plant Biology Public Affairs Committee.

Pamela Ronald is former member of the John Innes Centre Science and Impact Advisory Board, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center Scientific Advisory Board and the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Biology Scientific Advisory Board.

In 2024, Pamela Ronald participated in The Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center Residency, where she developed strategies to optimize carbon transfer from plants to soil mineral-microbial complexes.

Pamela Ronald received the Louis Malassis International Scientific Prize for Agriculture and Food, and was named one of the world's 100 most influential people in biotechnology by Scientific American.

Pamela Ronald's 2015 TED talk has been viewed more than 2 million times.

Pamela Ronald is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry.