Sheng-Yang He

Sheng Yang He is a University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University and an Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical institute. Dr. He is best known for his study of plant-pathogen interactions. In the past two decades, Dr. He's lab uses the Arabidopsis thaliana-Pseudomonas syringae pathosystem to discover some of the basic principles that govern bacterial pathogenesis and disease susceptibility in plants. His lab also uses microbial pathogenesis as a probe to gain insights into important cellular processes in plant biology, including immunity, jasmonate signaling and stomatal defense. Recent research in his lab begins to shed light on how climate conditions and phyllosphere microbiota influence disease development. Dr. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Zhejiang (Agricultural) University, China, and a PhD degree from Cornell University, USA. He is a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher, a Past-President of the International Society of Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.