ARIBIDOPSIS

Philip N. Benfey is currently Paul Kramer Professor and Director of Duke Center for Systems Biology; and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. He graduated from the University of Paris and received his PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology from Harvard University under the guidance of Dr. Philip Leder. He did post-doctoral research at Rockefeller University in the field of Plant Molecular Biology working with Dr. Nam-Hai Chua and was appointed an assistant professor there in 1990. In 1991 he moved to New York University where he became an associate professor in 1996 and full professor in 2001. He was the founding director of the Center for Comparative Functional Genomics at NYU. In 2002 he was named professor and chair of the Biology department at Duke University and in 2003 was named a distinguished professor. Benfey is the recipient of a Helen Hay Whitney post-doctoral fellowship and an NSF pre-doctoral fellowship. He was named a Fellow of the American Associatio...

  "Rejoice when other scientists do not believe what you know to be true. It will give you extra time to work on it in peace. When they start claiming that they have discovered it before you, look for a new project."  "Intriguingly, I once read that although most postgraduate students who want to become academics do not become academics, those who "fail" to become academics are happiest."  "At first, I thought open access was a wonderful idea: it would allow everyone access to the scientific literature. But now I have doubts. Electronic publishings seems to be plagued with unethical practices. Even e-journals from respected publishers appear to be operating dubious practices, such as "pyramid selling", in which someone is appointed senior editor to recruit 10 editors, to each recruit 10 more specialist editors, who are each asked to produce a special issue with 1-20 papers in their speciality. Then, BANG! The journal could have...

"At all career stages, we must understand the layer below us (a more fundamental one) and a layer above us (a more applied or complex one). Thus, if we are working looking at a single plant level, we should aim to understand what is happening at a cellular/molecular level and also the crop level. This gives us entry into more fundamental science and entry into the application of our science."  Richard Richards CSIRO Fellow, CSIRO Plant Industry, Canberra, Australia  Source: Luminaries ASPB news (March/April 2015. Volume 42, Number 2)