BCMB Professor wins American Society of Plant Biologists Award
Elena Shpak of the Department of Biochemistry, Cellular, and Molecular Biology was presented the 2007 Early Career Award at the annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists in July. The Early Career was instituted to recognize outstanding research by scientists at the beginning of their careers. This award is a monetary award made annually for exceptionally creative, independent contributions by a member of the Society who is not more than five years post-Ph.D. on January 1st of the year of the presentation.
Elena Shpak was selected for the Early Career Award because of her outstanding accomplishments in two different areas of research in plant cell and molecular biology and her potential for continued creative contribution. She is recognized for achievements in both plant biochemistry and plant development. Elena earned a doctorate in biochemistry in only 4 years at Ohio University under the supervision of Professor Marcia J. Kieliszewski. She avoided the “safe” projects in her advisor’s laboratory and instead took on and solved the challenging question of what might be the determinants of hydroxyproline-O-glycosylation, resulting in a seminal paper dealing with hydroxyproline-O-glycosylation codes. In addition to the high-profile peer-reviewed publications that resulted from her doctoral research project, she also contributed to numerous U.S. International patents and patent applications and a license agreement. Elena subsequently completed postdoctoral studies in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington with Professor Keiko Torii. There, she is credited with making three major contributions to our understanding of the ERECTA receptor tyrosine kinase.
After spending a year as a biology instructor at California State University in Fullerton, Elena joined the faculty at the University of Tennessee in 2006, where she has established a research program to study ERECTA-mediated signaling and to understand how plant organ primordia develop. Both her Ph.D. and postdoctoral mentors indicate that Elena had an enormous impact on the direction of research in their own groups and, despite her youth, she is already attributed with excellent mentoring skills. Elena is described as “impressive,” a “high flier with a creative flair for research,” a “whiz at the bench,” and a “terrific scientific companion” with the potential to contribute “fundamental textbook level insights into plant growth and development.”