Plenaries

Emilia Hannula is an associate professor in Leiden University Institute of Environmental Sciences where she leads the Soil Ecology group and research programme ‘Future food systems’. She obtained her PhD in 2012 and has since worked in multiple EU and national projects related to soil ecology and plant-soil interactions. In 2021 she received Teyler’s gold medal for her work on soil fungi and has recently been awarded multiple grants to study interactions between plants and soil life. Her work spans across ecosystems (i.e. forests, agriculture, grasslands, dunes, urban) and scales (ranging from individual interactions between organisms to landscape scale).

Andrea Carminati finds the ability of plants to adapt to the variable and heterogeneous soil water availability and oscillating atmospheric water demands is fascinating. Our group studies (some) physical aspects of soil-plant water relations. In this context, the rhizosphere is a region of particular relevance. Due to the nonlinearity of soil hydraulic properties, the rhizosphere becomes a limiting factor for transpiration during drought, and when this happens, it happens fast. Plants developed diverse strategies to attenuate such nonlinearities, for instance by growing hairs and exuding polymeric substances. These small-scale processes have large impacts on plants and emerge at larger scales.

Craig Sturrock is a Principal Research Fellow and co-director of The Hounsfield Facility, at the University of Nottingham, UK. He gained his PhD in microbial ecology from the University of Abertay Dundee (UAD). In 2004, he began using X-ray Computed Tomography to investigate the influence of soil microbes on soil structural development within the interdisciplinary SIMBIOS research group at UAD. His research focuses on the application of multiscale X-ray imaging and complementary techniques to quantify the soil-plant-microbe ecosystem. This includes investigating microbial-driven shifts in soil microstructure and assessing how agricultural management practices—such as tillage—affect crop root system architecture through modifications in soil structure. These techniques were central to the integrative approach used to underpin the discovery of how plant roots use ethylene to alter their growth in response to soil compaction.

Ina C. Meier is Full Professor of Functional Forest Ecology at the University of Hamburg, where she co-heads the Department of Biology and heads the wood science study programs. Her research focuses on how human-accelerated environmental change affects root physiology and the feedback between plant, mycorrhiza and soil in forest ecosystems. Her long-term research vision aims to answer the pressing question of whether the severity of increasing summer drought and the associated decrease in nutrient availability can be buffered by specific species combinations and functional group abundances in forests and other ecosystems of major C sink strength. The key innovative aspect of her approach is to integrate diversity questions into climate change research to enable large-scale predictions of forest responses to environmental stress.

Franciska de Vries is Professor of Earth Surface Science at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on understanding the role of root-microbe interactions in ecosystem response to climate change, using a range of approaches, from controlled experiments to large-scale field studies. Franciska is a Clarivate Highly Cited Scientist, she serves on several expert advisory committees, is actively involved in scientific publishing as a member of editorial boards and committees, and writes columns and op-eds for a range of general media outlets. She is a champion for diversity, inclusivity, and equity in science, both inside and outside her organisation.