Announcing the winners of the New Phytologist Tansley Medal 2021

Last updated: 22 Feb, 2022

It is our great pleasure to announce that the 2021 New Phytologist Tansley Medal for Excellence in Plant Science has been awarded jointly to Michał Bogdziewicz and Anna T Trugman.

Anna T Trugman

Michał Bogdziewicz

Michał is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Environmental Biology at the Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU) in Poznań, Poland whose work encompasses forest ecology, especially interactions between plants and animals, and the mechanisms driving variation in plant fecundity. Michał's winning Tansley insight considers proximate mechanisms of seed production patterns in perennial plants to identify processes through which masting may be affected by changing global drivers.

Anna is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, whose research focusses on understanding the Earth system consequences of plant physiological processes and ecological interactions, particularly in water-limited systems impacted by climate change. Anna’s winning Tansley insight explores how vegetation models, which simulate plant physiological processes, can be used to resolve gaps in our understanding of plant responses to climate.

We are also delighted to acknowledge three outstanding Tansley Medal runners up:

Rebecca T Batsone is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA, but will be starting as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at McMaster University in Canada in July 2022. Rebecca’s Tansley insight is titled ‘Genomes within genomes: nested symbiosis and its implications for plant evolution’.

Marcos Fernández-Martínez is a Researcher at the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF), Barcelona, Spain. Marcos’ Tansley insight is titled ‘From atoms to ecosystems: elementome diversity meets ecosystem functioning.

Fanny E Hartmann is an Associate Professor at the University of Paris-Saclay, Orsay, France. Fanny’s Tansley insight is titled ‘Using structural variants to understand the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of fungal plant pathogens’.

The New Phytologist Tansley Medal for excellence in plant science is awarded annually in recognition of outstanding contributions to research by individuals in the early stages of their career. Applications for the 2022 Tansley Medal competition are currently being evaluated and we would like to bring to your attention that the deadline for the 2023 Tansley Medal competition will be earlier than in recent years – the application process will open on 1 July and close on 1 November 2022.

We encourage applications from across the breadth of the plant science community and invite you to bring the Tansley Medal competition to the awareness of your colleagues and students world-wide.

We offer our warmest congratulations to Michał, Anna and their fellow finalists, and we wish them continued success in their future careers.

The judging panel for the 2021 Tansley Medal was comprised of the following New Phytologist Editors: Amy Austin (Buenos Aries, Argentina), Ian Dickie (Canterbury, New Zealand) Liam Dolan (Vienna, Austria), Elena Kramer (Harvard, USA), Shuhua Yang (Beijing, China).