Rate My Professor Steven Whitham

Whitham's research specializes in molecular plant pathology, focusing on plant-virus and plant-fungus interactions, particularly in soybean and corn. Pioneering work includes cloning the N gene from tobacco that confers resistance to tobacco mosaic virus (Whitham et al., Cell, 1994) and developing virus-based genetic screens in Arabidopsis that identified RTM genes restricting virus movement (Whitham et al., PNAS, 1999). At Iowa State, he has developed virus-induced gene silencing and gene editing vectors for crop plants, including studies on soybean rust interactions. Notable publications include "Molecular soybean–pathogen interactions" (Whitham et al., Annual Review of Phytopathology, 2016) and "CRISPR/Cas9-based gene editing using egg cell-specific promoters in Arabidopsis and soybean" (Zheng et al., Frontiers in Plant Science, 2020). His scholarship has an h-index of 58 and over 13,800 citations. Awards include Fellow of the American Phytopathological Society (2022), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2016), ISU Regents Award for Faculty Excellence (2021), and ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Mid-Career Outstanding Achievement in Research (2009). He teaches plant-microbe interactions, molecular plant pathology, and virology, and serves as Editor for PhytoFrontiers and Review Editor for Frontiers in Plant Science.