In 2006, the IS-MPMI board established the IS-MPMI Award, to be presented to a scientist in the MPMI community who has performed outstanding innovative research. IS-MPMI would like to congratulate the 2016 IS-MPMI Awardee Sharon Long, a Professor of Biology at Stanford University. She received her Bachelor’s degree from the California Institute of Technology, and carried out her Ph.D. studies at Yale University, studying plant development with Ian Sussex.

As a postdoctoral fellow she trained with Fred Ausubel at Harvard, where she began her work on Rhizobium-legume symbiosis. She joined the Stanford faculty in 1982. Her research group employs a spectrum of approaches, including microbial and plant molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics, to study the symbiosis of Rhizobium bacteria and plant hosts. They are especially interested in the signals and signal transduction pathways used by nitrogen-fixing bacteria and plants.