Fighting Climate Change with "Ideal" Plants

Wolfgang Busch
Salk Institute Professor
Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory

Wednesday, November 18, 2020, 5:00 - 6:00pm PT
This will be a Virtual Event

Photos from Prof Busch's Salk faculty bio webpage

How will we and future generations solve the climate change problem? Intense focus is being directed at reducing carbon output: EVs, renewable energy, recycling, you name it. What about sucking carbon out of the air?

The Salk Institute’s Harnessing Plants Initiative (HPI) is a bold approach to fighting climate change by optimizing a plant’s natural ability to capture and store carbon and adapt to diverse climate conditions. HPI's researchers are finding ways for plants to draw down and store more carbon and —combined with other global efforts—mitigate the disastrous effects of climate change while providing more food, fuel and fiber for a growing population.

We are honored to have Professor Wolfgang Busch, one of HPI's lead scientists, to tell us more about HPI's important research.

Meet Our Speaker: Professor Wolfgang Busch

Wolfgang Busch is a Professor at the Salk Institute in the Plant Molecular And Cellular Biology Laboratory and the Integrative Biology Laboratory.

As one HPI's lead scientists, he is researching and developing plant varieties with enhanced carbon sequestration capabilities for removing CO2 from the atmosphere and thereby counteracting climate change.

Professor Busch received his undergraduate degree and PhD from the University of Tübingen, Germany and was a postdoc at Duke University. In 2011, he joined the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology in Vienna as a group leader. During this time, he established his research program in root systems genetics and focuses on understanding which genes, genetic networks, and molecular processes determine root growth and its responses to the environment. In 2017, he joined Salk as an Associate Professor and was promoted to full professor in 2020.

To learn more about the Busch Lab at Salk, go to busch.salk.edu. 

This will be a virtual event via Zoom. Zoom meeting details will be provided after registering.

There is no cost to join, but you must register. This is open to all members of the MIT community, our friends and our future friends.

To RSVP for this event, please go to:  https://sandiego.alumclub.mit.edu/salk-busch-Oct2020