Yanping Fu received her Bachelor’s degree (1993) in Plant Protection and her Master’s degree (1996) in Plant Pathology, both at Huazhong Agricultural University. Then, she completed her Ph.D. in Molecular Plant Pathology from China Agricultural University in 2003. Currently, she is a Professor in the Department of Plant Protection, Huazhong Agricultural University. From 2012 to 2013, she was also a Visiting Scientist at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. Her main research interests include biological control, especially focusing on postharvest diseases of citrus and Sclerotinia diseases.
Jiatao Xie holds a B.A. in Plant Protection (2003) and a Ph.D. in Plant Pathology (2008) from Huazhong Agricultural University (HZAU), and he has been a Professor at the College of Plant Science and Technology of the same university since 2017. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Kentucky, USA (2010–2013), and served as an Associate Professor at HZAU (2012–2016). His research interests include fungal virus diversity and their interactions with hosts, and he is committed to research related to the use of fungal viruses for the green prevention and control of crop mycosis.
Jiasen Cheng is currently a Professor at the College of Plant Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University. He is also a member of the Chinese Society for Plant Pathology, The American Phytopathological Society, and the Genetics Society of America. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Plant Protection and Master’s degree in Plant Pathology from Huazhong Agricultural University in 2000 and 2003, respectively, and earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Sun Yat-sen University in 2006. His research interests include plant–pathogen interactions; the pathogenesis of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum and Botrytis cinerea; and non-coding RNA in Fusarium graminearum.
Tao Chen is a Professor at the College of Plant Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University. She received her Bachelor’s and Ph.D. degrees from the College of Life Science & Technology in 2006 and 2012, respectively. She was also a Visiting Scholar at Michigan State University from 2017 to 2020. She won the third prize of the Natural Science Category of the Hubei Provincial Science and Technology Award in 2020. She is mainly engaged in research on the mechanisms of plant–microbe interactions.
Bo Li holds a Ph.D. in Plant Pathology from Huazhong Agricultural University and has been a Professor at the Department of Plant Pathology of the same university since 2017. Prior to this position, he served as a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Texas A&M University (2011–2012), then a Postdoctoral Research Associate (2013–2015) and an Assistant Research Scientist (2015–2016) at the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, Texas A&M University. His laboratory focuses on signalling networks regulating plant innate immunity and mechanisms of the plant–microbe interaction through molecular biology, biochemical and genetic approaches.
Xiao Yu is a Professor at the College of Plant Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University. Prior to this, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow (2013–2018) and an Assistant Research Scientist (2018–2019) at the Department of Plant Pathology & Microbiology, Texas A&M University. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Plant Protection and Ph.D. in Plant Pathology, both from Huazhong Agricultural University, in 2008 and 2013, respectively. Her main research areas include mechanisms of plant autoimmunity and regulation of immune homeostasis; mechanisms of recognition and interactions
between plants and endophytes; and mechanisms of plant systemic immunity induced by endophytic fungi.
