Jonathan Jones elected to US National Academy of Sciences

Professor Jonathan Jones, Group Leader at The Sainsbury Laboratory, has been elected as a foreign associate to the US National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his outstanding career researching plant-pathogen interactions.

There are currently 452 Foreign Associates alongside 2,250 US Members. Approximately 200 current members and associates are Nobel Prize winners.

His election means Professor Jones will become involved both in communicating and assessing manuscripts for the high impact journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Professor Jones will attend an induction ceremony in Washington in April 2016.

Professor Cyril Zipfel, Head of The Sainsbury Laboratory, said: “This is an outstanding recognition, which rewards Jonathan’s amazing career and scientific contributions.”

Professor Nick Talbot, Chair of the Council of The Sainsbury Laboratory, said: “I am extremely pleased to see Jonathan Jones elected to the National Academy of Sciences. It is a very richly deserved honour, given his enormous contributions to our understanding of plant-microbe interactions and the mechanisms of plant immunity. It also brings further recognition to The Sainsbury Laboratory and the wider John Innes Centre research community underlining their position at the forefront of plant sciences.”

Professor Jones said: “This is an incredible honour, and I’m absolutely thrilled to join the illustrious cohort of great scientists in the NAS. I thank all the fantastic scientists who have worked in my group over the last 26 years at TSL, whose dedication and hard work were indispensable to the track record on which I was elected. I also thank David Sainsbury, whose sustained, thoughtful and generous funding has made TSL such a fantastic place to make discoveries.”