2026 marks the 25th Anniversary of the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology department at the University of Michigan and we hope you will join us to celebrate at the 2026 Connell Lecture:

From Genomes to Grains: Engineering Rice for a Changing Climate
The rapid advance of genetic technologies has provided new tools to generate crops that are resilient to climate change. Professor Pamela Ronald will discuss engineering plants for resistance to infection and strategies to reduce methane emissions in rice.

Ronald is a Distinguished Professor in the Dept of Plant Pathology and Genome Center at UC Davis and an Investigator at the Innovative Genomics Institute, UC Berkeley. She also serves as a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology division and Director of Grass Genetics at the Joint BioEnergy Institute. She is a faculty affiliate of the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University.

The Priscilla Connell Memorial Lecture is MCDB's flagship lecture. This annual lecture series has an illustrious history with presentations by Nobel Laureates, National Medal of Science Recipients, National Academy of Sciences Members, and Royal Society Members.