Assmann Named President of American Society of Plant Biologists

Penn State Waller Professor of Plant Biology Sarah M. Assmann has been named president of the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB). The society promotes all aspects of plant biology and has over 5,000 members, approximately 40 percent of whom are international members. Assmann will begin serving as the organization's president in October 2008. After being elected president-elect by the ASPB membership last year, Assmann served a one-year term on the ASPB program committee and began a three-year term on the nominating committee. In addition, she currently is serving on the ASPB Education Foundation Board.

"I am enthusiastic about this opportunity to further the many important missions of ASPB," said Assmann. "These missions include not only serving the needs of professional plant scientists, but also reaching out to the general public, government officials, educators, and K-12 students to help them understand what plant-science research is all about and why it is important for the economic and environmental health of our nation and the world."

A world leader in the field of plant-cell signal transduction, Assmann studies how plants receive and respond to stimuli from the environment. In particular, she studies guard cells located on the surface of plant leaves. The activity and regulation of these cells plays a vital role in drought tolerance and photosynthesis.

Assmann's service to the scientific community includes membership on the editorial boards of several scientific publications. She was a monitoring editor for Plant Physiology from 1994 to 1997 and she has been a co-editor for The Plant Cell since 1998. Both journals are published by ASPB. In 2002 Assmann was named the Waller Professor in Plant Biology at Penn State. The honor is intended to provide a faculty member with the necessary resources for research in plant electrophysiology to effect the healing and growth of plants. "Such support provides a wonderful opportunity to learn even more about plant behavior," Assmann said.

Assmann was named professor in 1997 after joining the Penn State faculty as an associate professor in 1993. In 2001, she earned a Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement based on her research. Among her other awards and honors is a National Science Foundation POWRE Award in 1999. She also served as the director of a Penn State Action Potential summer science camp titled "Magical Life in the Muggle World," which used the theme of "herbology" from the Harry Potter books and movies to introduce children in grades four through eight to plant biology.

Prior to coming to Penn State, Assmann was an associate professor at Harvard University. She earned her doctoral degree in biology at Stanford University in 1986 and her bachelor's degree in biology, magna cum laude, at Williams College in 1980.