SIOBHÁN BRADY RECEIVES EARLY CAREER AWARD

April 2009

The American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) announced Siobhán Brady, assistant professor of plant biology, as the recipient of its Early Career Award.

This award, instituted in 2005, recognizes outstanding creative and independent research by scientists in the first five years post-Ph.D. on January 1st of the award year. Dr. Brady will formally receive her award at the ASPB Awards Ceremony on July 18, 2009 in Honolulu, HI!

Dr. Brady earned her Ph.D. in developmental biology at the University of Toronto in 2005. She then was awarded a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) postdoctoral fellowship and continued her research from 2005-2008 as a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Biology and Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy at Duke University in Durham, NC.

Dr. Brady is currently an assistant professor of plant biology in the UC Davis Department of Plant Biology and the UC Davis Genome Center. There, Dr. Brady's lab focuses on understanding how a network of transcriptional interactions regulates tissue development and function. The root of the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, is ideally suited to study the architecture of tissue-enriched transcriptional networks at spatiotemporal resolution. Read more about this promising research at the Brady lab Web site.

From the ASPB Web site:

Siobhán Brady, assistant professor at the University of California Genome Center and Section of Plant Biology, is recognized as “a rising star in the area of plant systems biological research” and as having “a rare combination” of qualities “that truly deserves to be recognized.” Siobhán obtained her PhD working with Professor Peter McCourt at the University of Toronto, Canada, on abscisic acid signaling. Not only had she mastered a strong background in hormone signaling during this early period of her training, she was also quick to realize the power of systems biology in the dissection of regulatory networks in Arabidopsis. It was at the University of Toronto that Siobhán made significant contribution in the bioinformatics of cis-element identification for tissue-specific transcriptional regulatory networks in Arabidopsis. She was awarded a prestigious and highly competitive postdoctoral fellowship from the Canadian government. In her postdoctoral work in Professor Philip Benfey’s laboratory at Duke University, Siobhán took on what her mentor referred to as “the greatest challenge” in determining the expression profiles of all the cell types in the root. She examined individual roots so as to achieve profiling of all the developmental stages along the longitudinal axis of the root. For this work, she had to develop new software tools to accomplish analysis of data along both the radial and longitudinal axes of the root. It is her ability to identify and work with the right people that further distinguishes her accomplishments from those of her peers. The result is a seminal paper in Science that revealed a high-resolution spatiotemporal expression map for root development. Dr. Benfey referred to Siobhán as “fearless” in adopting new techniques and as “a leader in scientific discussions and in lab organization.” Siobhán had mentored many younger students in the Benfey laboratory. In addition, she also took on a leadership role in running a Duke summer undergraduate research program that had a combined focus on mathematical modeling and biology. She was recognized by Duke University and named “Outstanding Postdoc” in 2007. Her accomplishments indicate that she “will be a natural leader among the next generation of systems biologists,” and we look forward to hearing of her future success.

Congratulations Dr. Brady for outstanding research!