Ann Elizabeth Lichens-Park serves as the national program leader for microbial genomics in the Institute of Food Production and Sustainability at the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Born in Oakland, California, Lichens-Park received a BA in biology from Pomona College in 1980 and a PhD from Harvard University in microbiology and molecular genetics in 1988. She held post-doctoral positions at Harvard University and at Dartmouth Medical School before beginning her career at NIFA (then the USDA Cooperative State Research Service) in 1992. Lichens-Park has held a continuously evolving position, serving as director for a succession of USDA programs and taking on greater and greater responsibility as her career path evolved. She has supported and led funding programs on plant pathology, weed science and management, bio-based pest management, nitrogen fixation, invasive plants, plant–microbe interactions, microbial genomes and functional genomics, and microbiomes/phytobiomes.
Lichens-Park is widely known in the plant pathology community. While directing important funding programs for the science of plant pathology, she actively engages with researchers, keeping current on the latest trends in the science and seeking ideas for new directions for research. She is a regular presence at meetings relevant to plant pathologists, such as the annual meeting of The American Phytopathological Society (APS), and she frequently serves on panels at these meetings to provide guidance in changes to funding programs and insights into new, emerging programs. She supports young scientists by encouraging and mentoring their participation on her program panels, by rapidly responding to their queries, and by providing helpful insights about their proposal ideas. She follows through for the research community with the science funded as part of her program. In 2014, she co-edited a series of three books on the genomics of plant-associated microbes, which documented the value of having microbial genomes and how it has pushed science forward.
During her tenure at USDA NIFA, Lichens-Park has made extraordinary and diverse contributions to interagency collaborations, national initiatives, and international global food security in support of science and the agricultural sector. Her broad experience and collaborative abilities led to her service as the USDA representative to The Microbe Project, a U.S. interagency working group on microbial genomics composed of the National Science and Technology Council and the Committee on Science, Subcommittee on Biotechnology. Lichens-Park was selected as executive secretary and for membership in the Subcommittee on Biotechnology for the same group. She also served on the Colloquium Steering Committee of the American Academy of Microbiology and represented NIFA on the Microbiomes Interagency Working Group of the U.S. Science and Technology Council. Her dedication and passion for global food security and her remarkable collaborative nature have supported her in a number of international initiatives, including her work as the USDA representative to the United States–Israel Binational Research and Development Program; as the co-chair of the United States–Indonesia Agricultural Science and Technology Working Group (U.S. State Department and Indonesian government); and as the NIFA representative to the United States–United Kingdom Workshop on Plant Health Research. Her engagement provides visibility to the science of plant pathology and reflects very favorably on the plant pathology community.
Dr. John L. Sherwood, an APS Fellow, provides a unique perspective on this nominee. Sherwood has had the privilege of knowing Lichens-Park through three avenues: as a seeker of USDA competitive funds, as a member of the APS Public Policy Board, and as a fellow national program leader (NPL). Sherwood writes:
“The plant pathology community has been fortunate and well served by Ann being part of our discipline. During the many years I interacted with Dr. Lichens-Park, it was evident that she strived for funding to be peer-awarded to the most competitive and leading-edge science of our discipline. While the view from outside the USDA was that there was keen competition among scientists for limited funding for plant pathology, during my time at the USDA, it was quite apparent that there also was keen competition internally in the USDA to assure that the discipline of each NPL was funded. Each NPL serves as a champion for their discipline, and plant pathology has been advantaged in having Ann as our champion. The competition between disciplines in the development of the call for proposals was driven by input from a wide spectrum of stakeholders, such as grower organizations, scientific societies, scientists, and university administrations. Each NPL strived to justify the funding for the priorities of their program and the potential next breakthroughs in that area of science while also working to complement other relevant areas of the federal competitive grants portfolio within the USDA and other competitive funding entities. As genomic sequencing was coming of age, Ann sought alliances with the DOE and the NSF so that plant pathogens were well represented in the portfolio of organisms that were priorities for sequencing. Thus, Dr. Lichens-Park has always served our community well.
“During my appointment as an NPL, Ann served as a mentor to me to facilitate putting grant panels together, providing guidance on working with other agencies and how to effectively work with the few that obtained funding and the many that may have felt a bit spurned by not receiving an award. It was evident that Ann strived to develop young scientists in providing discerning ad hoc and panel reviews. She sought to have all proposals in her program area reviewed by appropriate scientists that did not have conflicts of interests and by panels composed of competent, dedicated, and fair scientists that reflected the diversity of our discipline and institutions. These tasks became more challenging as our discipline moved away from single-investigator to multi-investigator submissions. Ann always addressed the issue at hand with enthusiasm, patience, and the goal of assuring that the best and most progressive science was supported with the limited available funding. The insightful vision and meritorious dedication of Dr. Ann Lichens-Park to our discipline is a solid foundation for her recognition as an APS Fellow."
In summary, Lichens-Park's central role in advancing plant pathology into the era of genomics-enabled biology eminently qualifies her to be named an APS Fellow.
