June 20, 2025
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Priyamedha Sengupta, Junior Member IS-MPMI Board of Directors
I joined the IS-MPMI Board of Directors as a junior member nearly three years ago, as I was finishing up my Ph.D. studies at the University of Cologne, Germany. Since then, I have moved to new countries and workplaces, but one of the things that remained constant was the online board meetings on the third Wednesday of every month. Now that the upcoming 2025 IS-MPMI Congress is going to be held at Cologne, I feel that my time served on the board has come full circle.
When, I joined the board, we were one year away from the 2023 IS-MPMI Congress in Rhode Island, and preparations for the congress were in full swing, with then IS-MPMI President Prof. Roger Innes. One of the first tasks, I participated in was drafting the call for award nominations in the Outstanding and Early Career Scientist category together with Prof. Mary Beth Mudgett (then past-president), Prof. Jeanne Harris (then MPMI editor-in-chief), and Goodluck Benjamin (newly appointed junior BOD member). Later, as the days to the 2023 IS-MPMI Congress grew smaller, all of us on the board were involved in evaluating applications for the travel grants awarded to graduate students, postdocs, and junior PIs attending the congress. For a graduate student such as myself, it was a fairly difficult task to evaluate the travel grants, because every other application seemed great! Prior to that, I had been a recipient of a travel grant, but being on the other side of the table provided me with a different perspective altogether. Soon, it was also time to evaluate Outstanding and Early Career Award nominations, although I couldn’t completely contribute to that part, as the day of my Ph.D. defense also got closer! Nevertheless, I graduated and will always remember the entire board congratulating me during the next monthly meeting.
Coming back to 2023 IS-MPMI Congress preparations, together with former junior BOD member Charles Roussin-Léveillée, I organized the Travel Awardee Lunch, where the awardees would have a chance to meet with a plenary speaker of their choice during an informal lunch session. While Charles was in contact with the plenary speakers, I coordinated with the travel awardees to ask for their preferences (feeling a bit like a matchmaker). Finally, the list was assembled, and IS-MPMI staff member Tressa Patrias kindly took over organization of the lunch, as I couldn’t attend the congress due to visa complications.
Aside from the biennial IS-MPMI Congress, the IS-MPMI board is involved in organizing an online conference known as the Early Career Researcher (ECR) Showcase, where mainly graduate students and postdocs from across the world present their research. As a speaker at the 2022 ECR showcase, I was amazed by the reach it had in the IS-MPMI community. During one of our board meetings in 2024, when we were discussing ways to increase community engagement, the ECR showcase emerged as a popular option and, hence, the 2025 edition came into being. I led one of the breakout sessions during the event held on February 20, 2025, on Building Bridges—Networking Strategies for Early Career Scientists. I went in without much preparation (and quite a bit of trepidation), since the topics were assigned to the board members rather last minute. Luckily, the discussion turned out well, starting off with Patricia Baldrich (former junior BOD member and now IS-MPMI BOD secretary) and me sharing how our respective experiences as board members helped in networking. The discussion then shifted more toward seeking funding opportunities and navigating the job market.
One of the main reasons I have enjoyed being a board member is that my roles did not fall within well-defined patterns and, in fact, were quite versatile. In this regard, I would like to mention the Science Communication miniseries (2024–2025), which I wrote for Interactions to highlight the importance of scientific outreach, particularly in plant-microbe interactions research. Initially intended to be a one-time post, the article turned into a three-part miniseries, with the help of Interactions Editor-in-Chief Prof. Anjali Iyer-Pascuzzi, who showed so much enthusiasm when I sent in my six-page write-up!
To wrap things up (as with my time on the board), one of the memories that I will cherish from this experience is when junior members got voting rights on board decisions advocated by the current IS-MPMI President, Prof. Adam Bogdanove. As Adam noted, “Junior members should have powers too!.” I believe that the new pair of junior board members will put this power to good use and contribute to strengthening the IS-MPMI community.
