Mo-Mei Chen graduated from the Department of Plant Protection, Beijing Agricultural University. She was Professor and Director of the Forest Pathology Laboratory, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing, China. In 1982, she was invited by University of Wisconsin, Madison to work in their Dutch Elm Diseases program. From 1984 until present she has taught and performed research at the Department of Plant Pathology and University Herbarium of the University of California at Berkeley. She has conducted research on West Gall Rust and White Pine Blister Rust and the international quarantine project under National Science Foundation funding for eight years. In the 1990s, she was invited by the USDA as a key expert consulting on the pest risk assessment of mass limber importation from Russia. Her research interests cover the biogeography of China, North America, and Siberia. She was invited for consultation on tree rust at the International Center of Biology and the International Crop Protection Compendium, London in 2003.
Recently her new book “Forest Fungi Phytogeography” has been reviewed by several world famous commentators as “a forest fungal constitution and of vast in formation on the forest diseases and pests in China, Soviet Far East and North America”. Forty years of research in several major forests of the world has resulted in the discovery of new genera and new species of fungi. It also includes the most recent 20 years of literature search and experimental results on tree-rust evolution and provides new evidence and theories on flora analyses and novel flora names. Her publications include studies of the white-pine blister rust flora of North America and East Asia, western gall rust speciation and the evidence of variability in pathogenicity of genetic population, the forest fungi of the Alaskan inland ecosystem, the forest diseases and insects of the Tibetan Plateau and its integrated past management, and fungi resources of tanoak in California. She is the author of 21 books, and nearly 80 peer reviewed journal articles.
She is Adjunct Professor at Beijing Normal University and the Chinese Academy of Agriculture. She has served on the Forest Pathology committee of the American Phytopathology Society (2005-2008) and committee of BIRC's Advisory Board and president of membership board for integrated pest management at programs since 1987. She is an expert in medicinal and edible fungi at the American Mushroom Institute and an author of “Fungal Treasure”, which will be published by the University of California, Berkeley in 2007. She was recently invited to be an editor of Asian Plant Pathology Journal and honored with the award of “International Scientist of The Year 2006” by IBC. |
