Kathy Osteryoung

Kathy Osteryoung Elected to Executive Committee

Katherine W. Osteryoung joins the ASPB Executive Committee as an elected member on October 1.

Kathy earned a BA degree in biological sciences from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and in 1990 she earned a PhD in plant physiology from the University of California, Davis.

Kathy was a postdoctoral research associate from 1990 to 1993 and an NIH postdoctoral fellow from 1993 to 1995 in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Arizona. From 1996 to 2000, she was assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Department of Biology at the University of Nevada, Reno. In 2000, she moved to Michigan State University, where she was associate professor until 2006 and is currently professor in the Department of Plant Biology.

Kathy’s research interests include the composition, structural organization, biochemical dynamics, evolution, and regulation of the chloroplast division machinery in plant cells. She also has investigated cyanobacterial cell division as an evolutionary model for plastid division and dynamics.

Her professional activities include a stint from 2004 to 2006 as evaluator, Faculty of 1000, and service on the editorial committee of Annual Review of Plant Biology from 2006 to the present. She was also a member of the peer-review grant panels of USDA’s National Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program for Plant Growth and Development and of NSF’s Integrative Plant Biology program. In addition, she has been a mentor to 24 undergraduate research students.

Kathy has served ASPB in a number of capacities. From 2005 to the present, she has been a monitoring editor for Plant Physiology. She was a member of the Charles Reid Barnes Life Membership Award Committee from 2005 to 2007, and from 2007 to 2008, she was chair of that committee.