Lindsey du Toit is a Professor and Extension Plant Pathologist in the Department of Plant Pathology at Washington State University (WSU), specializing in vegetable seed crop pathology. Lindsey obtained a BS degree in plant pathology at the University of Natal, South Africa, and MS and PhD degrees in plant pathology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She served as a diagnostician for the Plant & Insect Diagnostic Lab at the WSU Puyallup Research & Extension Center from 1998-2000, and then became an Assistant Professor at the WSU Mount Vernon NWREC in 2000. Her research and extension program focuses on the epidemiology and management of diseases affecting vegetable seed crops in the Pacific Northwest USA, particularly small-seeded vegetables such as spinach, brassicas, carrot, onion, radish, and table beet. Lindsey teaches a graduate course in field plant pathology, leads the Pacific Northwest Vegetable Extension Group, holds the Alfred Christianson Distinguished Professorship in Vegetable Seed Science at WSU, and is a Fellow and former President of the American Phytopathological Society.

Linda Kinkel is a Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Minnesota.  She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Plant Pathology and M.S. in Biometry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and completed Post-doctoral research at the University of California-Berkeley. 

Dr. Kinkel’s research focuses on the ecology and evolutionary biology of plant microbiomes in native and agricultural habitats.  She is especially interested in developing practical approaches for managing the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of antagonistic soil bacteria to enhance disease suppression.  Her current work integrates genomic and transcriptomic analyses of soil and endophytic populations and microbiomes in relation to pathogen suppression, plant host and plant community diversity, and soil carbon dynamics in agricultural and native prairie soils.  She has led the International Agricultural Microbiomes Research Coordination Network, and has served as Chairman of the American Phytopathological Society Public Policy Board and as Associate Editor-in-Chief for the Phytobiomes Journal.  Dr. Kinkel also serves as Founder and Chief Science Officer of Jord BioScience, seeking to translate fundamental knowledge of soil microbiomes to practical tools for growers.  

Dr. Walt Mahaffee is a research plant pathologist with United States Department Agriculture-Agriculture Research Service in Corvallis, Oregon. His team’s research spans numerous disciplines to develop sustainable methods for managing diseases of horticulture crops and has resulted in the commercial implementation of inoculum monitoring tools, several biological control agents, disease forecasting models, and cultural practices for disease management in horticulture crops. Current projects include inoculum monitoring as a decision aid, fungicide resistance, disease forecasting and epidemiology, turbulent airflow modeling and pathogen dispersion, and pathogen ecology.

Florent Trouillas is an Associate Professor of Cooperative Extension with the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis and the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier, CA. He received a PhD in Plant Pathology in 2009 from the University of California, Davis. Dr. Trouillas specializes in fruit and nut crop pathology and his activities include basic and applied research that aims to elucidate the etiology and biology of plant diseases, and develop Integrated Pest Management strategies. Research activities in his laboratory include studies of canker, soil borne as well as fruit and foliar diseases of almond, cherry, olive, peach, pistachio, and walnut. His research includes fungal and bacterial taxonomy, phylogenomic, the molecular detection of plant pathogens as well as the development of biocontrol solutions and cultural alternatives to chemical fungicides. Dr. Trouillas has established a strong research program investigating fungal and bacterial canker diseases of almond and stone fruit crops in California. He also investigates Phytophthora diseases of pistachio and almond. His cooperative extension and education activities include the training of farmers and pest control advisers on disease diagnosis and management. He also serves as a lecturer for various specialized courses in Plant Pathology.

Jon West is a senior scientist at Rothamsted Research, working on applied crop protection projects. Jon obtained a BSc in Biology from Royal Holloway, London in 1990 and a PhD in Plant Pathology at Reading in 1994.  Jon’s work has focused on the biology and control of fungal diseases, including early warning of diseases by detecting airborne spores, optical sensing of disease symptoms, measurement of plant disease resistance and the survival and dispersal of spores.  Jon acts on committees including the Association of Applied Biologists applied plant pathology group and the British Crop Production Council diseases working group, is currently an associate editor for Frontiers in Agronomy and is a member of the British Society for Plant Pathology.  Previously, he was a member of the European Food Safety Authority plant health panel (2015-18) and was an associate editor for the European Journal of Plant Pathology and for Aerobiologia.  He is a visiting Professor at the University of Hertfordshire and has been recognized with an honorary Professorship from the Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China and Hebei Agricultural University, China.

Dr Peter Dodds is a Chief Scientist at CSIRO Agriculture&Food where he leads a team developing genetic tools to improve the control of important rust diseases of wheat. Dr Dodds received a Bsc(hons) in 1991 and a PhD degree in 1996 from the University of Melbourne, Australia. After a postdoctoral stint at the USDA/UC Berkeley Plant Gene Expression Center he returned to Australia as an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow at CSIRO analysing disease resistance gene evolution and recognition specificity in the flax rust disease system. This work led to the first identification of virulence proteins from rust fungi as effectors delivered into host cells during infection and recognised directly by host immune receptors (resistance proteins). His work has made important contributions to understanding the molecular basis of disease resistance including key events in immune receptor function from ligand binding, through nucleotide-mediated activation, to oligomerisation of signalling domains. His current research involves the identification of virulence factors from cereal rust fungi, understanding their role in disease as well as exploiting the immune responses of the host plants for protecting crops from disease. He is a Highly Cited Researcher a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Dr Murray Sharman is a Principal Plant Pathologist with Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Queensland and has specialised in plant virology of grains, cotton, and horticultural crops in the sub-tropics and tropics for 27 years. He has researched crop virus epidemiology to develop disease management strategies, and diagnostic development to improve virus detection and characterisation. More recently, some of his research has been focused on biosecurity preparedness for key virus threats of cotton and grains and has collaborated with national and international plant disease surveillance teams to learn more about exotic threats to better understand the potential impact to Australian crops and improve incursion response strategies

A/Professor Andrew Geering is currently President of the Australasian Plant Pathology Society and Vice President-elect of the International Society for Plant Pathology, representing the Organizing Committee for the International Congress of Plant Pathology 2028. Andrew has strong connections to Adelaide, having graduated with a PhD from the Waite Institute in 1992. For nearly his entire professional career, Andrew has worked in Brisbane, initially with the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries but for the last 13 years with The University of Queensland. Andrew is primarily a plant virologist but he has dabbled in mycology, bacteriology and even entomology as part of broader biosecurity projects. Living in Queensland has provided Andrew the opportunity to work on diseases of tropical and subtropical horticultural crops such as banana, avocado, pineapple, citrus and sugarcane, and his expertise has been sought in developing nations throughout the world, particularly in southeast Asia. Andrew has always strived to see fundamental scientific discoveries translated into practical outcomes for farmers. He has an interest in history, reflected in the topic he has chosen for his Presidential Address.