PULLMAN, Wash. – B.W. “Joe” Poovaiah has been selected to give the 2012 Distinguished Faculty Address on Friday, March 30, as part of the annual Showcase celebration of WSU research, scholarship and creative work.
The address will be at 2 p.m. in Todd 276. Reservations are requested. Showcase reservations are being accepted at http://showcase.wsu.edu through Friday, March 16.
The annual award from Washington State University recognizes a faculty member whose achievements in research, scholarship and teaching place him or her in the front ranks of his or her discipline.
Poovaiah, Regents professor in the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, has gained international prominence for his pioneering research on calcium/calmodulin-mediated signaling in plants, which has implications for plant growth and protection. His research and scholarly activities continue to bring recognition to his department, to the College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences and to WSU.
He holds six patents and has published more than 200 research articles in leading scientific journals. He has successfully competed for millions of dollars in federal grant support.
Recently, his team had unprecedented success in publishing a series of papers in the prestigious journal Nature documenting how calcium/calmodulin-mediated signaling controls plant growth, plant-microbe symbioses and plant immunity/defense. In 2009, their findings were highlighted in the journal Cell.
In 2012, Poovaiah was elected a fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2010, he was elected a member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences and a foreign fellow by the National Academy of Sciences, India. In 2011, he received WSU’s Sahlin Faculty Excellence Award for Research, Scholarship and Arts.