On Saturday, September 11, 2021 we had a commemorative celebration for UC Berkeley's Department of Plant & Microbial Biology, celebrating 30 years.
Department of Plant and Microbial Biology - Celebrating 30 Years of Excellence
PMB is pleased to announce a series of events and programming in honor of the department's 30th anniversary.
PMB will host a series of online talks through 2020 (dates TBD) that cover topics which reflect the Department’s contributions to CRISPR/Cas9 and agriculture; innovation and entrepreneurialism; and industry & academia.
And for recent news highlighting the excellence of PMB's leading edge research for the public good, click here.
Recent Lectures
Past Events
Fungi and Friends
This moderated discussion featured a panel of UC Berkeley experts will pore over the myriad ways modern civilization interacts with fungi. The panel will speak to our millennia-long appetite for them in cuisines throughout the world, as well as their evolving presence in commerce, medicine (including the use of psilocybin in modern mental health treatments), public health (including indoor air quality and the spread of opportunistic disease), as well as the impact climate change is having on the mushroom season.
Serving (Up) Science: Tools, Trust and Twitter
Our panel of social media super users shared their insights, addressing how, why and by whom these new communications tools are being shaped. The panel also probed how changes in access to a broader online audience impacts the in-person world—both intended and unintended—and invited viewers to consider the opportunities and challenges for the PMB community as it enters its fourth decade.
The Future of Food: Genetic Improvement Meets Sustainable Agriculture
How do we feed a growing population and engineer crops that are resilient to climate change? How do we increase crop yields and fight crop diseases and pests while preserving our soils and water sources? The rapid advance of gene editing and other technologies has provided a new tool kit to address these questions and more, and they have already made an impact at a global scale, just at the moment when global-scale solutions are needed most. Brian Staskawicz (UC Berkeley) and Pam Ronald (UC Davis) discuss the latest advances in using genome editing and other genetic technologies to promote sustainable agriculture at scale, both promises and potential pitfalls, and how we move from lab to field safely and equitably.
Of Virulent Viruses and Reservoir Hosts
Join professor Britt Glaunsinger and postdoc Cara Brook in a Berkeley Conversation webinar on lethal viruses, pathogen transfers to humans, and more.