The Fellow Award recognizes current members of the SIVB who have been active members for at least 10 years. A Fellow has made outstanding contributions in their area of specialization or discipline to include research, teaching, and administration in public, government, academic, or private industry activities. The Society for In Vitro Biology honored Dennis Gray and Wayne Parrot with Fellow Awards at the 2010 In Vitro Biology Meeting. This issue of the In Vitro Report will highlight Dr. Dennis Gray, and Dr. Wayne Parrot will be highlighted in an upcoming issue of the In Vitro Report.
Dennis Gray,
2010 Fellow Award Winner
Dennis J. Gray –SIVB Plant Fellow 2010
Dr. Dennis Gray is a world-renowned grape tissue culture and biotechnology expert who has been invovled with the Society since 1982 when he was a postdoc in Dr. Bob Conger’s lab. Since then he has actively served the SIVB in different committees, participated in organizing annual meetings as well as sessions of the annual meetings. He has also contributed several oral and poster presentations almost at every meeting he attends. He also makes it a point that his students and/or postdocs also present their work at the society’s annual meetings. He has served on the editorial board of the society’s journal, In Vitro Cell Dev Biol – Plant and continues to review manuscripts in spite of his other editorial jobs.
His major breakthrough contribution for in vitro biology is the first, unequivocal demonstration of direct somatic embryogenesis in monocots using orchard grass when he was a postdoc, which was published in Science. He is also a world authority in the development of grape tissue culture and transformation. All the grape cell culture scientists in the world would appreciate his contributions to grapevine cell culture systems, which are now routinely used in several labs across the world. At present, Dennis is pretty much synonymous with grapevine tissue culture and biotechnology. He has published over 25 refereed publications since 2000 alone and has about 10 book chapters and edited 4 books in the past 10 years alone. In addition he has 12 International or US patents on several technologies in grape or melon tissue culture and genomics. He motivated and trained a number of students and postdocs thus perpetuating his academic pedigree in in vitro biology.
Dennis was one of the earliest scientists to develop a highly repeatable regeneration system for melons that served as a benchmark for other scientists to continue. Dennis also played a key role in development of synthetic seed technology and was one of the key early researchers in the field of artificial seeds. As mentioned earlier his breakthrough contribution to plant cell biology is the development of a somatic embryogenesis system for monocots using an orchard grass model, something that was thought to be impossible in those times.
As a mentor, one of the points he keeps emphasizing is ‘translate your work to publications as quickly as possible and translate those findings to the field. Otherwise you have achieved nothing.’ I am sure all of you would agree that this is a very important thought to instill in the younger generations. He doesn’t mind doing the bench work himself if needed and he does it with such an infectious passion. I do remember vividly the effort he took to get most of the microscopy work done to perfection, which often receives a special reference from the reviewers.
A general perception among the public [or growers] is that scientists, such as in vitro biologists, are often lab-oriented or academic people and they may not have a grasp of the industry. Dennis is equally liked and respected by the grape growers of Florida for his contribution to that small but vital industry to the state, as someone who can balance the lab to field transformation. He was deft in explaining even complex scientific research to an average grower so that they can understand and appreciate the advancement such science can bring forth to the society. He didn’t just do it himself but also instilled the same among his mentees as well.
Dennis is well deserving of the SIVB Plant Fellow award. He is a highly productive scientist with global recognition, a great mentor and an affable person. He has been a long, faithful consistent presence and contributor to the Society for In Vitro Biology and I hope he will continue to do so for several more years to come.
Submitted by Jayasankar Subramanian
