Ithaca, New York
March 7,  2001

The Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, Inc. (BTI) has named plant molecular biologist David B. Stern as vice president for research.

Stern succeeds Stephen H. Howell, who has accepted the directorship of the Plant Science Institute at Iowa State University.

Stern has been a researcher at BTI, located on the Cornell University campus, since 1989. His research has focused on the regulation of gene expression in chloroplasts, the site of photosynthesis in plants.

He earned a bachelor's degree in molecular biology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1981, a master's degree in biochemistry from Cambridge University, England, in 1982, and a doctorate in biological sciences from Stanford University in 1986.

In 1995, Stern was named a Guggenheim Fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and conducted research at the Institute for Biochemistry and Biophysical Chemistry, Paris. He has served as co-editor of the scientific journal The Plant Cell since 1994 and has been an associate editor of Plant Molecular Biology since 1996.

BTI was established in 1924 by Col. William Boyce Thompson for the study of plant physiology in order to help feed hungry people. BTI, with laboratories and offices in Yonkers, N.Y., relocated to Cornell in 1978. The move was made possible by an act of the New York State Legislature,
which in 1972 provided funds for the State University of New York for construction of a new laboratory facility assigned to Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences for use by BTI.

Related World Wide Web sites: The following site provides additional information about this release: Boyce Thompson Institute home page: <http://bti.cornell.edu>

Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander, Jr.
Office: 607-255-3290
E-mail: bpf2@cornell.edu 

Cornell University News Service
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Cornell news release
N3367