I'm a professor and researcher committed to understanding how plants withstand disease. I'm a pioneer in investigating ‘defense priming’. The term describes the enhanced capacity of immunized plants or mammalian innate immunity cells to mobilize defense resulting in faster and/or more robust activation of defense responses. I'm also committed to sustainable agbiotech and host and nonhost resistance of soybean and Arabidopsis, respectively, to Asian soy rust thus bringing concepts discovered in model systems to agriculture. I have >30 yrs experience in leadership, science management (including boards), scientific writing and reviewing, extramural funding acquisition, and teaching.