Professor Nitzan Shabek Receives NSF CAREER Award
Nitzan Shabek, an assistant professor in the Department of Plant Biology, has received a $837,000 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. The five-year award will support Shabek’s research into elucidating the sensing mechanism of an emerging and unique class of plant hormones. Additionally, as an integral part of the research activities, this project will create a unique teaching platform and outreach program to encourage young students to pursue knowledge in STEM.
“Our research focusses on understanding how plants can sense their environment from the atomic to whole organismal level,” says Shabek. “In this project, we plan to decode the signaling pathway of a new plant hormone, Strigolactones, that not only regulate many aspects of plant growth and development, but also serve as communication signal between plants and fungi. This plant-fungi signal has been exploited by devastating parasitic plants that completely destroy crops globally.”