We initiated this project October 1, 2021, so we are wrapping up our fourth year of activities. One of the most meaningful aspects of this Research Coordinating Networks has been to increase communication and collaboration across the professional society plant science space. Working together has allowed us to identify and address serious and difficult challenges in culture of the discipline.
Below are a few of the things we have been working on this past year.
Addressing barriers to participation at scientific conferences
This was the first project we embarked on, back in 2022, and after much work we have published our recommendations and outcomes in eLIFE (Puig-Lluch et al., 2025). We also hosted additional Bystander Intervention Trainings in partnership with ADVANCEGeo. These trainings are very impactful and empower participants to step in when they witness harmful behaviors. Finally, we initiated a structured interview process with plant scientists to learn more about their experiences at conferences and in the broader context of professional societies. More on that soon.
Training plant scientists to be better mentors
Over the past few years a large group of plant scientists from across the discipline have been working collaboratively to develop the Social Identity Matters In Mentoring (SI-MI Mentoring) program. There has been broad interest already in this program, which we were able to introduce in a workshop at the Arabidopsis meeting (manuscript in review) and were invited to present at a meeting of the Royal Society of Biology. The seven-session program is currently being evaluated by a group of beta testers and, after some revision, we will release it to all in 2026.
Increasing participation in plant science
Plant science is for everyone. We have been showcasing the discipline broadly at conferences, and also providing travel funds to first-time conference attendees. We sponsored 28 people in our third cohort of travel awardees to attend plant science conferences in 2025, including the Botany Conference, the Plant Biology Conference, the Maize Genetics Meeting, and the International Congress on Molecular-Plant Microbe Interactions. Our 2026 travel award program is about to be launched. We also hosted an exciting student-led symposium featuring often unheard voices and experiences of plant scientists. Finally, we hosted exhibit booths at the SACNAS and AISES conferences last year and organized a well-attended careers workshop at the SACNAS conference.
More information about these and more activities can be found on our blog.
References
Marcia Puig-Lluch, Mary Williams, Eric Wada, Imeña Valdes, Carrie Tribble, Andrew Read, Kanwardeep S Rawale, Chelsea L Newbold, Bathabile Mthombeni, Michael Moody, Laura Minero, Annarita Marrano, Melanie Link-Perez, Roger W Innes, Cody Coyotee Howard, Adriana Hernandez, Corri Hamilton, Denita Hadziabdic, Morgan Gostel, Joanna Friesner, John E Fowler, Mindy Findlater, Sakina Elshibli, Steven J Burgess, Hank W Bass, Burcu Alptekin, R Shawn Abrahams, Patricia Baldrich (2025) Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: Making conferences in the plant sciences more inclusive through community recommendations eLife 14:e106877 https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.106877
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