Biography
Simon Hiscock is Professor of Botany at the University of Oxford, Fellow of Christ Church, and Director of the Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum. His research interests in plants are wide, ranging from the genetics and molecular genetics of mating systems to adaptation and speciation. He studied Botany as an undergraduate at Oxford and subsequently became a Biology teacher. After teaching GCSE and A-level Biology for three years he began a PhD researching self-incompatibility in the Brassicaceae, first at the University of Reading, and then at Oxford University, where he obtained a DPhil. Following three years of post-doctoral research, he was awarded a BBSRC David Phillips Research Fellowship to study the molecular genetics of self-incompatibility in the Asteraceae using Senecio squalidus (Oxford ragwort) as a model. He was appointed Lecturer in Plant Sciences at the University of Bristol in 2002 and became Professor of Botany in 2007. He was Director of the University of Bristol Botanic Garden from 2003 until 2016. He is a Fellow of the Linnean Society and served as its Scientific Secretary for Botany from 2013-2022. He has served on NERC’s Peer Review College continuously since 2005 and is a core panel member. He is a member of RBG Edinburgh’s Science Advisory Committee and is the Editor-in-Chief of Plants, People, Planet published by The New Phytologist Foundation.