Giles Oldroyd

FRS
Born
Giles Edward Dixon Oldroyd
NationalityBritish
EducationUniversity of East Anglia
University of California, Berkeley
AwardsRoyal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award
Scientific career
FieldsPlant symbioses[1]
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge
Stanford University
ThesisIdentification and characterization of Prf a resistance gene in tomato (1998)
Notable studentsYiliang Ding
Websitewww.slcu.cam.ac.uk/people/giles-oldroyd

Giles Edward Dixon Oldroyd FRS is a professor at the University of Cambridge,[1][2] working on beneficial Legume symbioses in Medicago truncatula.[3] He has been a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award winner and the Society of Biology (SEB) President's Medal winner.[4] From 2014 Giles has been in the top 1% of highly cited plant scientists across the world.[5]

Education

Giles attended Huntington School, York before studying for his Honours degree in Biology at the University of East Anglia from 1990 to 1994.[6] He completed his PhD in 1998 at the University of California, Berkeley, studying plant/pathogen interactions in tomatoes.[7]

Career and research

After his PhD, he moved to Stanford University to work as a postdoctoral scientist studying legume/rhizobial interactions in the laboratory of Sharon R. Long.[8][9][10] In 2002, Giles moved to the John Innes Centre to start his own research group and in 2017 he moved his research group to the Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge. In 2020 Giles was appointed to the Russel R Geiger Professorship of Crop Science in the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge and Director of the new Crop Science Centre, a partnership between the University of Cambridge and the National Institute of Agricultural Botany.

Giles Oldroyd's work focuses on understanding the signalling mechanisms that allow the associations with these beneficial micro-organisms and the use of this information to transfer the nitrogen-fixing capability from legumes to cereal crops. His website says "Our work has implications for global agriculture, but we are most interested in the application of our work to benefit small-holder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa".

In 2012 Giles Oldroyd was awarded a $10m research grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in collaboration with other symbiosis research groups. Their aim is to engineer cereal crops such as maize to undergo the beneficial root nodule symbiosis in order to obtain the nutrient Nitrogen without the application of agricultural fertilisers.[11][12] The Enabling Nutrient Symbioses in Agriculture (ENSA) project received a further $35 million grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations in 2023.[13]

As of March 2023, he has an h-index of 81 according to Google Scholar.[1]

Awards and honours

References

  1. ^ a b c Giles Oldroyd publications indexed by Google Scholar Edit this at Wikidata
  2. ^ "Professor Giles Oldroyd". Sainsbury Laboratory.
  3. ^ Oldroyd, Giles .E.D.; Downie, J. Allan (2008). "Coordinating Nodule Morphogenesis with Rhizobial Infection in Legumes". Annual Review of Plant Biology. 59: 519–546. doi:10.1146/annurev.arplant.59.032607.092839. PMID 18444906.
  4. ^ a b "PRESIDENT'S MEDALLISTS" (PDF). Society for Experimental Biology. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 19 January 2015.
  5. ^ a b "Giles Oldroyd's Publons profile". Publons. Retrieved 8 June 2022.
  6. ^ a b "Giles Oldroyd | Faculty Member". Faculty Opinions.
  7. ^ Oldroyd, Giles Edward Dixon (1998). Identification and characterization of Prf a resistance gene in tomato (PhD thesis). University of California, Berkeley. OCLC 42329477.
  8. ^ Oldroyd, G.E.D; Wais, R. J; Galera, C; Catoira, R; Penmetsa, R. V; Cook, D; Gough, C; Denarie, J; Long, S. R (2000). "Genetic analysis of calcium spiking responses in nodulation mutants of Medicago truncatula". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 97 (24): 13407–13412. Bibcode:2000PNAS...9713407W. doi:10.1073/pnas.230439797. PMC 27237. PMID 11078514.
  9. ^ "Giles Oldroyd profile" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 January 2015. Retrieved 19 January 2015.
  10. ^ "Passion drives the best and brightest in biology". THE - Times Higher Education. 14 July 2006.
  11. ^ "GM crop scientists win $10m grant". BBC News. 15 July 2012.
  12. ^ "ENSA - Enabling Nutrient Symbioses in Agriculture".
  13. ^ "Cambridge-led consortium receives $35m to boost crop production sustainably in sub-Saharan Africa".
  14. ^ "Giles Oldroyd". The Royal Society. Retrieved 19 September 2020.
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