ASPB Leadership

Leeann Thornton

Leeann Thornton

ASPB President

Leeann Thornton is a Professor of Biology at The College of New Jersey. At TCNJ, Leeann has taught a variety of courses ranging from first-year biology and general seminars to advanced plant genetics and senior capstone courses. She was recently the First-Year Seminar Program Director. Leeann has been active in ASPB for most of her career and has served on the Membership Committee and Council. Leeann helped establish the Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUI) section to get more scientists from colleges and universities that do not grant PhDs involved in ASPB. Prior to TCNJ, Leeann did her postdoc work at Washington University in St. Louis and began studying the role of cytochrome P450 enzymes in plant responses to the environment. She has studied these enzymes in Arabidopsis, rice, and maize to determine the structure and function relationships for subfamilies within the CYP72 clade.

Hong Ma

Hong Ma

ASPB President-Elect

Hong currently holds the Huck Chair in Plant Reproductive Development and Evolution, and he is a Professor of Biology at the Pennsylvania State University. Previously, Hong served as Associate Dean for Research and Innovation of the Penn State Eberly College of Science; and prior to that he was Professor and Dean of the School of Life Sciences at Fudan University, Shanghai. Hong also served as the Director of the Penn State Cell and Developmental Biology Graduate Program. His lab has studied plant reproductive development, including flower development, anther/pollen development, meiosis, and drought response during reproduction; his team is also interested in the evolution of members of large angiosperm families that include models and crop species. Hong served on the ASPB Publications Committee and was an Associate Editor for Plant Physiology. He has also been a contributor to Plant Physiology and The Plant Cell. Hong values the opportunity to serve ASPB members; to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion; and to advance career development for early career members.

Gustavo MacIntosh

Gustavo MacIntosh

ASPB Immediate Past-President

Gustavo MacIntosh is a Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology at Iowa State University. For the vast majority of his career, he has been a member of ASPB and operated in the United States, but he became a plant scientist in Argentina. Gustavo did his postdoc training at the DOE-Plant Research Laboratory at Michigan State University and while there became immersed in the molecular biology of Arabidopsis and yeast. He began working on ribonucleases, which remains his main research interest. Gustavo has been at Iowa State University since 2003, where he built a laboratory investigating the functional characterization of plant RNases and the mechanisms and regulation of RNA salvage and cellular homeostasis.