Below is the list of invited speakers and the title of their talks. The program booklet, containing a detailed schedule can be found here.

The Leslie Wanner Keynote Speaker:

Anna Whitfield
DARPA
“Turning an enemy into an ally: Plant rhabdoviruses as a biotech tool”

Invited Speakers:
Sabastian Massart
University of Liege, Belgium
“Next generation applications of high throughput sequencing for plant viruses”

Bing Yang
University of Missouri
“Probe pathogen and host of rice bacterial blight with CRISPR tools”

Pingtao Ding
The Sainsbury Lab, England
“Plant immunity zig-zags into a full circle”

Jinyoung Barnaby
DBNRRC, Beltsville, MD
“Exploring mitigation strategies for methane emissions through rice genetics and/or soil microbiome”

Yulin Jia
Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center, AR
“Genome organization and co-evolutionary biology of host pathogen interactions”

Blake Bextine
DARPA
“Insect Allies and the Advanced Plant Technologies program”

Vince Klink
USDA-ARS
“Cell type-specific gene expression analyses and their utility in understanding defense processes”

Wusheng Liu
North Carolina State University
“Toward transgene-free plant gene editing”