Brian Staskawicz

Staskawicz was educated at Bates College (BA, 1974), Yale University (MS, 1976) and the University of California, Berkeley where he completed a PhD in plant pathology in 1980.^[4]

Staskawicz has made many seminal contributions to the understanding of infection strategies of plant pathogens and immune response of plants.^[5][6][7] These include the cloning of the first pathogen effector gene and the cloning and characterisation of one of the first plant NOD-like receptors.^[1]

Staskawicz and his colleagues also played a major role in establishing Arabidopsis thaliana as a model organism to study the molecular basis of microbial recognition by plants and genetically dissect defense signaling pathways.^[1] More recently^[when?], he is leading an effort at the IGI in the genome editing of agriculture crops for biotic and abiotic stress resistance and improved plant performance.^[1] Work in his laboratory has identified and characterised bacterial effector proteins from both Pseudomonas syringae and Xanthomonas spp.

Staskawicz was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2019.^[1] He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the US and has been elected a Fellow of both the American Phytopathological Society and the American Academy of Microbiology.^[1] In 2025 he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture.^[8]