It is with great sadness that we report the passing of Dr. Kenneth L. Giles. We learned this news in early 2014 following a phone call where Fran Giles (Ken’s wife) told us that he passed away on March 11, 2012. Ken was an early pioneer in the area of plant tissue culture and has a legacy of individuals that worked with him over the years. Dating back to the late 1970s, a young graduate student named Jerry Ranch was Ken’s student at Iowa State University and published a paper in In Vitro entitled “Liposome-Mediated Uptake of Chloroplasts by Plant Protoplasts”. Jerry graduated and went on to have a stellar career of his own. Ken left Iowa State University and became the Director of Research for Twyford Plant Laboratories in England for much of the 1980s. He was instrumental in developing various high throughput systems including a mist-based plant bioreactor system through collaboration in the mid-1980s with a young researcher named Dr. Pamela Weathers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Massachusetts. This work was also published in In Vitro and is entitled “Regeneration of Plants Using Nutrient Mist Culture”. Pam, of course, went on to have a stellar career at WPI and she considers Ken to be one of her early mentors. In 1988, Ken was hired by a company named Vipont to build a plant secondary metabolism effort at the prestigious Plant Biotechnology Institute in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Canada). In 1989, Ken hired a young researcher named Dr. David Songstad, who just finished a Post-Doc with Dr. Jack Widholm, to lead Vipont’s cell biology effort to maximize yields of sanguinarine from Papaver somniferum (opium poppy) suspension cultures. It was Ken’s calm demeanor and crafted leadership that resulted in a plethora of publications over just a one year span regarding the factors involved with the elicitation of sanguinarine from opium poppy suspension cultures. Following Vipont, Dave went on and advanced his career through employment at Monsanto, Pioneer and, most recently, Cibus in San Diego, California. Over the years, Jerry, Pam and Dave kept in contact with Ken at various times. It was either through Christmas Cards, phone calls, emails or inviting Ken to speak at the 1996 SIVB meeting in San Francisco on the topic of Secondary Metabolism from plant cell cultures. Ken was not just a boss—he was a mentor and he was a friend. May our friend rest in peace.
Submitted by:
Jerry Ranch
Pam Weathers
Dave Songstad
