Pamela C Ronald

Pamela C. Ronald (born 1961) is an American plant pathologist and geneticist. She is a professor in the Genome Center and the Department of Plant Pathology, and founding director of the Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy (IFAL), at the University of California, Davis. She also serves as Key Scientist at the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, California. In 2018 she served as a visiting professor at Stanford University in the Center on Food Security and the Environment.

Her laboratory has genetically engineered rice for resistance to diseases and tolerance to flooding, which are serious problems of rice crops in Asia and Africa.

Early life

Pamela Ronald was born in 1961 to Patricia (née Fobes) and Robert Ronald of San Mateo, California. Robert Ronald, a Jewish refugee who was born Robert Rosenthal, wrote a memoir entitled "Last Train to Freedom". From an early age, Ronald spent time backpacking in the Sierra Nevada wilderness, sparking her love for plant biology. Ronald realized that analyzing and studying plants could be a profession after witnessing botanists in the field during a summer time hike with her brother. She already knew she loved plants after time spent helping her mother tend to them in the garden.

honors

• 1984–1985, Fulbright Fellow
• 1999–2000, Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2006 elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
• 2006 Fellow at the Davis Humanities Institute
• 2008 Fellow, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
• 2008 USDA National Research Initiative Discovery Award
• 2008 Tomorrow's Table selected as one of SEED Magazine's Best Books of 2008, Library Journal's Best Sci-Tech Books of 2008
• 2009 Science in Society Journalism Award from the National Association of Science Writers in Society for her commentary "The New Organic" of March 16, 2008, on the Boston Globe website
• 2011 Charles Valentine Riley lecturer (Selected by the AAAS, US National Academies, Riley Foundation and the World Food Prize Committee)
• 2011 Fast Company magazine named Ronald one of the 100 most creative people.
• 2012 Fulbright-Tocqueville Distinguished Chair Award, Université de Montpellier 2 and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement
• 2012, Louis Malassis International Scientific Prize for Agriculture and Food
• 2012 The Tech Award: Technology Benefiting Humanity
• 2012 Tomorrow's Table selected by the New Earth Archive Booklist as one of the 25 books selected in 2012 that educate, inspire, and drive change
• 2015 Selected by National Geographic as an innovator who is transforming her field of research "by creating, educating, provoking, and delighting"
• 2015 Scientific American named Ronald one of the World's 100 most influential people in biotechnology
• 2016 Named one of the 50 innovators and visionaries who will lead us toward a more sustainable future by Grist magazine
• 2016 Ronald named Breakthrough Fellow
• 2019 Elected Member, National Academy of Sciences
• 2019 Honorary Doctorate, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
• 2022 Wolf Prize in Agriculture