Our journey to Jeju, our 2027 Congress, is well underway! We have two pieces of news to share: the line-up for our first Road to Jeju Rising Stars Webinar, and a new addition to the Road to Jeju Legends of IS-MPMI series.
Road to Jeju Rising Stars of IS-MPMI — Session 1
Wednesday, July 29, 2026, at 3:00 PM UTC. Free, online, and open to all and then posted on our YouTube channel
Meet the speakers:
From a deep talent pool, our review panel selected four outstanding early-career researchers from around the globe. Each 15-minute talk will be followed by a short Q&A:
- Nguyen Tan Anh Nhi (University of Tokyo, Japan) — “Plant growth promotion by endophytic fungi: hyphae as conduits for nitrogen and beneficial bacteria”
- Urooj Fatima (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia) — “Conserved rust fungal pathogen ligands trigger non-host disease resistance in cereal crops”
- Adrian Gonzalez Ortega-Villaizan (University of Nottingham, UK) — “Rewiring root development: how Serendipita indica reshapes auxin dynamics to promote plant growth in Arabidopsis thaliana”
- Federico Emanuel Aballay (IFIBYNE, CONICET-UBA, Argentina) — “ppGpp (alarmone) signalling tunes nuclear transcriptome to control Arabidopsis defense responses”
These four will join the speakers from Sessions 2 and 3 — twelve Rising Stars in total — competing for the GetGenome Rising Star Award (a plenary talk at the 2027 Congress in Jeju, plus travel) and the Tanon Life Sciences Excellence Award (travel to the Congress).
IS-MPMI student member Abbie Rogers from Purdue University and Jr. board member Meenu Singla-Rastogi from Indiana University at Bloomington will introduce the speakers and serve as moderators.
Want to be an IS-MPMI Road to Jeju Rising Star? The next call opens on September 1st.
Rising Stars session 2 is set for November 18, 2026. The second round of self-nominations opens September 1, with a deadline of October 14 — please apply if you, or a student or PostDoc you know, would like to present. Session 3 will follow in March 2027.
We hope to see you on July 29! Please help us spread the word — forward this email, and share the registration link with your colleagues and students.
New: Prof. Eva Kondorosi joins the Legends of IS-MPMI series
We are delighted to announce that Prof. Eva Kondorosi will give a Legends of IS-MPMI talk in October 2026 — a pioneer of nitrogen-fixing symbiosis, and a wonderful addition to the series. The full date will be announced shortly.
In case you missed it: the series opened with a great talk by Prof. Roger Innes, followed by an extended Q&A after so many questions came in. View them on YouTube — the webinar and the extended Q&A — and on our this website, where all talks in the series will be archived.
The Legends line-up now reads:
- Roger Innes (Indiana University, USA) — completed, now on YouTube
- Jonathan Jones (The Sainsbury Laboratory, UK) — September 30, 2026
- Eva Kondorosi (Biological Research Centre, Szeged, Hungary) — October 2026 (date TBD)
- Jane Parker (Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Germany) — January 27, 2027
- Xinnian Dong(Duke University, USA) — May 2027 (date TBD)
Please consider joining and/or making a donation to support society activities. IS-MPMI is self-managed and run by volunteers. Watch for opportunities to deepen your involvement with the society.
The Road to Jeju Webinar Series is sponsored by GetGenome, Tanon Life Sciences, and the British Society for Plant Pathology.
