Sophien Kamoun - Short Biography#

For Sophien Kamoun's CV, please visit: http://kamounlab.dreamhosters.com/pdfs/SKamoun_CV.pdf

Sophien Kamoun is the Head of The Sainsbury Laboratory, John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, United Kingdom. Dr. Kamoun received his B.S. degree from Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris, France. He then attended the University of California at Davis, where he received his Ph.D. in Genetics in 1991. He then was a postdoctoral fellow at the NSF Center for Engineering Plants for Resistance Against Pathogens, UC Davis, and at the Department of Phytopathology, Wageningen University, Netherlands. In 1998, Dr. Kamoun was appointed assistant professor of oomycete molecular genetics at the Ohio State University, Department of Plant Pathology, Wooster campus, and was promoted to the rank of associate professor in 2002 and professor in 2006. In 2007, Dr. Kamoun joined The Sainsbury Laboratory where he is currently Head.

At the Sainsbury Laboratory, Dr. Kamoun continues to exploit genomics resources to improve understanding of plant pathosystems, unravel novel processes and concepts in plant-microbe interactions, and devise original disease management strategies based on the gained knowledge. Throughout his career, Dr. Kamoun made a number of significant contributions to the science of molecular plant pathology that have been described in over 120 journal articles. He pioneered the use of functional genomics strategies that link plant pathogen sequences to phenotypes and is credited with discovering several effector families from pathogenic oomycetes. Dr. Kamoun has also led community efforts to sequence and analyze the genome of the Irish potato famine pathogen Phytophthora infestans and continues to be actively involved in a variety of pathogenomics projects. His work on oomycete effector biology and pathogenomics has resulted in new approaches to breeding disease resistant crops.

Dr. Kamoun received the American Phytopathological Society Syngenta Award in 2003, the Ohio State University Pomerene Teaching Award in 2004, the WE. Krauss Award for Excellence in Graduate Research Mentorship in 2006, the Daiwa Adrian Prize in 2010, and was elected to the Academia Europaea in 2011 and the Académie d'Agriculture de France in 2012. He received a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Investigator Award in 2011.