UC Davis Events Calendar

Speaker: Tessa Burch-Smith, Associate Member, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center

Dr. Tessa Burch-Smith is an Associate Member and Principal Investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Prior to this, she was an Assistant then Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry & Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She competed her graduate and post-doctoral work at Yale University and the University of California at Berkeley, respectively. Her research focuses on intercellular communication in plants, particularly on structures called plasmodesmata that allow trafficking between cells. Her research uses a variety of molecular and cell biological approaches including advanced light and electron microscopy and plant viruses. Her lab also investigates chloroplast gene expression and how signals from chloroplasts can control expression of nuclear genes via retrograde signaling. She is the author of numerous scientific articles and has received funding for her research from the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.  She is also a Senior Editor and Associate Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions. She currently serves as Chair of the Science Policy Committee of the American Society of Plant Biologists and is a member of the ASPB Board of Directors.