Professor Susanne von Caemmerer ‘Improving the productivity of the world’s rice crop’

Susanne, ANU researcher, will describe the work of the international C4 Rice Consortium to identify and engineer genes necessary to install C4 photosynthesis in rice to greatly improve the yield of this crop, which is essential to meeting the world’s growing demands for food.

Susanne von Caemmerer, Professor of Molecular Plant Physiology at the Research School of Biology at ANU, has had a long connection with Canberra. Her research focuses on photosynthesis, with an emphasis on the mathematical modeling. Susanne co-developed one of the most widely used biochemical models of photosynthesis in plant biology and then led research to apply this model to practice. She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science as well as the German Academy (Leopoldina). In 2014 she received an award for her contributions to research in photosynthesis from the American Society of Plant Biology. She is also a keen Canberra gardener.