New research from UMass Amherst is the first to examine entire tomato species, from tiny, hairy and terrible-tasting to large and sweet.

Leannah Hicks will be part of the 2023–24 Ambassador Program of the National Corn Growers Association, designed for graduate students involved in research relevant to corn production and that demonstrate academic excellence and leadership potential. She will receive a financial award as well as funding to attend scientific conferences. Congratulations, Leannah!

Elizabeth Vierling is Professor at the University of Massachusettes Amherst and Founding Member of the ASPB Legacy Society. She majored in Botany as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, and got hooked on lab research during a junior year abroad Freiburg, Germany. After a brief year as a technician at Northwestern University, she got a PhD in Biology at the University of Chicago studying the biogenesis of photosystem I. Her postdoc with Joe L. Key at the University of Georgia started her on research on heat shock proteins (HSPs), first focusing on chloroplasts. This work continued in her faculty position in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, where work expanded from chloroplast sHSPs to homologues in the cytosol and Hsp101, and then into isolating Arabidopsis thaliana mutants defective in heat tolerance. Projects now encompass not only HSPs, but also how nitric oxide homeostasis impacts growth and fertility and the control of mitochondrial gene expression and respiration. She’s now at the Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Department at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA, and writes that “My research includes collaborations across the world that have been wonderfully enriching and expanded my research program in interesting and productive ways.”

The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) presented Jedaidah Chilufya with the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award. This award recognizes graduate students who show exemplary promise as future leaders of higher education and who are committed to academic innovation in the areas of equity, community engagement, and teaching and learning.