Keynote Speakers

Matteo Garbelotto, a Venetian by birth, has spent most of his life in California but owes his passion for forests to his early upbringing in the famous Dolomites.   A researcher at U.C. Berkeley since 1990 and a faculty there since 2000, he has created and directed the UCB Forest Pathology and Mycology Laboratory, a research center offering diagnostic services and applied solutions to protect both urban and wild forests in California. An adviser to several governments, Matteo is a world expert on invasive plant pathogens.  He is a Fulbright scholar, an officer of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations, an Editor on the Australasian Journal of Plant Pathology and, since 2020, he has been the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Plant Pathology. He divides his time between basic research, applied research, outreach and extension and, finally, citizen science. He has created and leads the SOD blitzes; a large scale volunteer-based survey of Sudden Oak Death across California.

Prof. Nina Gunde-Cimerman is the first to discover halophilic and halotolerant fungi in hypersaline environments around the world. She is also the first to discover psychrophilic and psychrotolerant fungi in Arctic glaciers (Svalbard, Norway), in particular in the subglacial environment and on the Greenland Ice Sheet, but also in extreme domestic environments, represented by household appliances (as exemplified by dishwashers) and in environments previously considered abiotic – bitterns, magnesium rich waters in the salterns, where she identified a new category of extremophiles: chaophilic fungi.

Wenbo Ma is a Senior Group Leader at the Sainsbury Laboratory (UK). Her research contributes to the advancement of fundamental knowledge of microbial pathogenesis, plant immunity, and host-pathogen coevolution. She is internationally recognized for her outstanding research on pathogen effectors, which has led to the discovery of crucial virulence strategies for inducing disease in host plants.

Dr Neus Teixidó, senior research scientist, is the Director of Postharvest Department at IRTA, and the coordinator of the Plant Health HUB for the organization and harmonization of Plant Health Research in Catalonia. Her research activity includes the control of postharvest diseases of fruits using several physical, chemical and biological alternative techniques, the study of epidemiology, and fruit-pathogen interactions in different pathosystems. She has over 30 years of experience in the development of biocontrol agents.