Rob McClung Is President-Elect

Rob McClung

Rob McClung is president-elect as of October 1, 2006, and will serve as president in 2007–2008. For the past three years he has been chair of the Publications Committee and has overseen a number of important initiatives relating to all aspects of the publications program and ASPB’s premier journals and books, including Plant Physiology, The Plant Cell, The Arabidopsis Book, and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology of Plants. In particular he has played a key role in developing the Society’s “Ethics in Publishing” series, a groundbreaking set of documents that address professional conduct on the part of authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher/staff. Furthermore he has co-authored, with Nancy Winchester, a series of articles in the ASPB News on ethics in publishing developed to educate the plant biology community about such important topics as image manipulation, authorship, and plagiarism.

Rob earned his bachelor’s degree in biology at Queen’s University in 1976 and his M.Sc. in biology from Dalhousie University in 1979, investigating bacterial nitrogen fixation associated with the roots of Spartina alterniflora in salt marshes with David G. Patriquin. He continued these studies with Robert E. Davis at USDA–Beltsville. His PhD (1986) is from Michigan State University, where he worked with Barry K. Chelm studying the symbiosis between nitrogen-fixing bacteria and soybeans. His postdoctoral research from 1986 to 1988 with Jay C. Dunlap in the Biochemistry Department of Dartmouth Medical School introduced him to circadian rhythms in the model filamentous fungus, Neurospora crassa. In 1988, he took a faculty position in the Department of Biological Sciences at Dartmouth College, becoming a full professor in 2001. Since 2004 he has served as the associate dean of the faculty for the sciences.

Rob’s research at Dartmouth continues to focus on the basis of endogenous biological clocks. The biological clock provides a fascinating challenge. How does an organism endogenously measure time and use that information to coordinate its physiology and behavior with the externally imposed cycle of day and night? The clock coordinates many aspects of biology, including basic metabolism and responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. Additionally, environmental cues and the circadian clock contribute to the decision to reproduce. Proper coordination of the endogenous timing mechanism with the external day confers adaptive advantage, and impaired circadian function is associated with reduced fitness. Rob’s work has emphasized the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. He has worked to establish the breadth of processes under clock control and to identify components of the central oscillator mechanism. More recently he has explored natural variation as a source of information on clock function. He has also extended his studies to examine natural variation in clock function in the crop species Brassica rapa, which, like Arabidopsis, thrives over a broad latitudinal range and hence under widely differing photoperiodic and climatic environments. In the context of climate change and the need to exploit increasingly marginal habitats, fuller understanding of clock mechanism may offer strategies to improve crop productivity.

Rob’s teaching has focused on genetics, molecular biology, and plant physiology, and he has taught both introductory genetics to first-year students and senior seminars in molecular genetics based on the primary literature. In his lab he has trained six PhD students; 10 postdoctoral fellows; and over 60 undergraduates, 14 of whom have completed honors theses with him. In 2002 his activities mentoring undergraduate women were recognized with a Dartmouth Women in Science Project Ten Year Mentorship Award. He currently heads the E. E. Just Program for Students in the Sciences, a program aimed at enhancing participation of underrepresented minorities, especially African Americans, in the sciences. He has chaired the multi-departmental Molecular and Cellular Biology Graduate Program and currently heads a Department of Education graduate student (GAANN) training grant. His professional activities have included grant review panels for NSF, NIH, and USDA–NRI.

In addition to his role as Publications Committee chair, Rob has served the Society as a member of the Women in Plant Biology Committee. He is currently a member of the North American Arabidopsis Steering Committee and the Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center Advisory Committee. Like any good Canadian, he enjoys playing hockey and shoveling snow.

Rob is excited and sobered by the current challenges to ASPB in advancing the science of plant biology. He hopes to emphasize the roles of ASPB in education at many levels. K–12, undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate education in plant biology is critical to expand and diversify the vibrant pool of talent in the plant biology community. ASPB is also working hard to help its members and its journals address the many intellectual, technical, and ethical issues encountered in the modern publication world. Finally, we always face challenges in explaining the crucial roles of plant biology to the public. We compete for attention (and funding) with many other compelling interests, including health care and lunar and interplanetary exploration. The study of plants is vital, we know, for the long-term health of the planet and its human and non-human populations. Our greatest challenge is to articulate that vital interest so as to make it compelling to the non-academic community.