Robert R. Granados

Charles E. Palm Scientist

An entomologist by training, Bob Granados began his career by focusing on insect vectors of diseases of ornamental plants, but over time became intrigued with the viral diseases of insects themselves--what he calls “nature’s own way of controlling insect pests.” He investigated the nature of viral pathogenesis in the insect host and discovered a family of baculovirus genes termed -enhancins, that assist the virus in the infection of insect pests. Over the course of his career he developed an impressive insect cell culture collection, which is of interest to many companies for production of microbial insecticides or pharmaceuticals for human and animal medical use. Holding over 40 patents, Granados is currently an intellectual property consultant for the institute. He remains active with several societies including the Society for Invertebrate Pathology and the Entomological Society of America.

Granados and former BTI scientist Karl Maramorosch recently teamed up to convene an international symposium on molecular engineering and biology of invertebrate cell cultures. The day-long symposium was part of the Eleventh International Invertebrate Cell and Tissue Culture Conference, held in San Francisco. Granados received a Society for In Vitro Biology Fellow award and the 2004 Presidents Award.

Robert Kohut

Bob Kohut joined the institute in 1980, and has conducted field research on the responses of plants to changes in air quality. He conducted two research projects at remote locations in the field: an assessment of the effects of oxides of nitrogen on tundra vegetation at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and a project to identify ozone-sensitive species and assess the impacts of ozone on plants at Acadia National Park in Maine. He also served on the institute’s management staff as the Director of Operations from 1991 to 1996.

His recent research examined the effects of escalating levels of carbon dioxide on the physiology and population genetics of plants. Kohut retired at the end of 2004, but is still completing an assessment of the risk of ozone injury to plants in 270 national parks, and developing a handbook for the assessment of foliar ozone injury on plants in the field. The work is sponsored by the National Park Service.

A. Carl Leopold

William H. Crocker Scientist Emeritus

Carl Leopold plays an active role in several environmental organizations both locally and abroad. Leopold was the founding president of the Finger Lakes Land Trust and is active in the Aldo Leopold Foundation, through which he carries out his father’s mission towards the ethical treatment of land. He was a founder of a local organization called Greensprings, which advocates burial without chemical treatment, and he initiated an ecological restoration program in Costa Rica that strives to restore depleted rainforest. Ten years after initiating the program, the once grassy pasture of approximately 100 acres is now a thriving tropical forest.

Fed up with his administrative duties as Dean of the Graduate College at the University of Nebraska, Leopold joined the BTI in 1977. Driven by the remarkable observation that seeds have the ability to lose water and not die, Leopold researched seed physiology and desiccation processes for 25 years at the institute. Over the years his group found that a range of sugar compounds serve as stabilizing components in dry seeds, and are a major factor in seed longevity in storage.

Alan Renwick

Alan Renwick joined the Boyce Thompson Institute in 1960, when it was still based in Yonkers. He continued working at BTI as he earned his MS in chemistry at City College, NY and his DF in forest entomology at the University of Göttingen, Germany. He was active in the institute’s Forest Biology Program for many years before the move to Ithaca, where he began studying the interactions between plants and insects in an agricultural setting. Using various models, he has focused on insects that feed on members of the cabbage family. His work elucidating the chemicals that attract or deter insects may someday contribute to new approaches to the development of plants that produce less of the tasty chemicals that attract, or more of the nasty compounds that repel the troublesome pests in the field.

After retiring in 2001, Renwick continued work supported by the National Science Foundation to use insects as models to understand the sense of taste. He serves on the museum committee at BTI and the Cornell/BTI committee on Molecular and Chemical Ecology, and advises a graduate student in entomology. Renwick recently co-authored a book chapter on insect adaptation to changes in plant chemistry. He also regularly reviews papers and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Chemical Ecology. Since retirement his “fieldwork” focuses on investigating golf courses and ski slopes.

Richard C. Staples

George L. McNew Scientist Emeritus

Dick joined BTI in 1950 as a graduate student in Plant Biochemistry at Columbia University. At BTI, he studied the development and cell biology of fungi, especially the obligately biotrophic rust fungi. The research involved the cloning of genes for the sensory perception of signals for mitosis and appressorium development. In the six years following his retirement in 1992, Dick worked with Harvey Hoch in the Department of Plant Pathology at Geneva, NY, where they studied the development of appressoria on substrates that trigger germling development, research for which they were given the Ruth Allen Award in 1994. Dick is Reviews Editor for FEMS Microbiology Letters, writes invited commentary on science and, with Len Weinstein, is writing a history of BTI, 1974-2000. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology, Cornell University.

Leonard H. Weinstein

William B. Thompson Scientist Emeritus

Dubai, Brazil, Spain and Iceland are just a few of the countries Len Weinstein visited in the past few years in his role as an environmental expert on fluorides and their effects on plant life. Weinstein recently wrote a book, Fluorides in the Environment: Effects on Plants and Animals, with co-author Alan Davison, a 1982 BTI visiting scholar. In addition to studies on atmospheric fluorides and their effects on plants and other biota, Weinstein also studied effects of other air pollutants and their combinations on plants, polyamine biosynthesis and phytoremediation. His last graduate student (with John Laurence), Mari Reeves, completed her studies on the phytoremediation of fluoride and complex metal cyanides.

Weinstein and Staples (see above) completed the history of BTI from 1974 to 2000 in early 2005.

H. Alan Wood

Alan Wood joined the Institute in 1968 as a plant virologist. During his early career he studied the physical and biological properties of plant and fungal viruses and then moved into the area of insect virology. His research played an important role in the study of the basic biology and molecular genetics of viruses. On August 9, 1989, in Geneva, New York, he conducted the first field release in the United States of a genetically-engineered virus. During this time he was a member of the USDA Agricultural Biotechnology Research Advisory Committee, chaired the Cornell University Recombinant DNA Committee and was given a Special Recognition Award from the U.S. Forest Service. Alan then researched methods to optimize the production of pharmaceutical proteins with insect viruses. He revisited his organic chemistry training and became a glycobiologist, defining the structures of N-linked sugars attached to glycoproteins produced in insect cells. As a result of his patented discoveries in this area, he became a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of AgriVirion, a company that produced pharmaceutical proteins in insect larvae.

In 2001 Alan became the founding Director of the Life Sciences & Biotechnology Institute at Mississippi State University. He joined the Boards of the National Agricultural Biotechnology Council and the University and Industry Consortium. He was a member of the congressionally-mandated USDA Research, Education and Economics Task Force that developed the framework for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.