The Michael E. Horn Endowment Fund was created to honor Dr. Michael E. Horn by supporting a Plenary Symposium at the SIVB Annual Meeting.
Dr. Horn was born on April 6, 1955, and passed away on August 27th, 2012. He lived large in a life that was just too short for his friends and loved ones. Full of energy, honesty, and variety, he was willing to share that intense energy and his feelings 24/7 whether professionally or personally.
Dr. Horn was an active member of the SIVB from 1990 till his passing, supporting the organization as Editor of “explants” for the TCA report from 1990 to 2002 where he created a number of comics, some of which are pictured here. He was Secretary of the Plant section 1992-1994; Chair of the Plant Section from 1998-2000 and 2000-2002; and Chair of the SIVB Publications Committee (2004-2008). He was greatly involved in the successful arrangement with Springer as the SIVB’s long term publication partner. He received his B.A. degree at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1977 and an M.A. degree in 1980.
He obtained a PhD in 1984 from the University of Illinois-Urbana in the laboratory of Prof. Jack Widholm. His PhD thesis described the development of one of world’s most widely used photoautotrophic plant cell culture systems and the characterization of the photosynthetic properties, lipid synthesis, nitrogen metabolism and ultrastructural properties.
He was a postdoctoral Associate at Ciba-Geigy ABRU unit in RTP, NC where he was among the first to genetically engineer a member of the important Gramineae family, in his case orchardgrass. Throughout his career, Dr. Horn’s research interest was in plant molecular pharming and he worked with numerous startups including Prodigene/ABI, Phyton Biotech, Prodigene, and Agrigenetics/Mycogen. He was also Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Plant Cell Reports.
The Michael E. Horn Emerging Technologies Symposium has been created to honor Dr. Horn’s legacy as a man always with new ideas in hopes that the new and exciting research presented during this session will help to inspire and encourage new scientific discoveries.
