Dr. Thomas Baum joins the Sebastian Eves-van den Akker Group at the University of Cambridge as a Visiting Professor supported by the British Society for Plant Pathology and a visiting fellowship at Clare Hall College. Dr. Baum is on a 6-months stay to explore and engage in collaborative research opportunities on cyst nematode biology and genomics with their Cambridge host. Dr. Baum is based in the Crop Science Centre (https://www.cropsciencecentre.org/), which is a joint effort of the University of Cambridge and NIAB (https://www.niab.com/).
Dr. Baum is a distinguished professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology at Iowa State University. Working in Iowa, the soybean cyst nematode is the most important plant pathogen problem in the state and is the main subject of Thomas’ inquiry. Their research work has been pioneering in the exploration of the molecular interface between plant-parasitic nematodes and their plant hosts as well as genomic studies of nematode parasitism.