Steven D. Tanksley

Steven Tanksley
File:Dr steven tanksley.jpg Steven D. Tanksley, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics at Cornell University
Nationality	American
Fields	Genetics
Alma mater	Colorado State University University of California-Davis
Notable awards	Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Award Martin Gibbs Medal of the American Society of Plant Biologists Wolf Prize in Agriculture

Steven Dale Tanksley is the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Plant breeding and Biometry and chair of the Genomics Initiative Task Force at Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Education and career

Tanksley received a bachelor's degree in agronomy from Colorado State University in 1976 and a doctorate in genetics from the University of California-Davis in 1979. He joined the faculty at Cornell in 1985 as an associate professor of plant breeding, and became full professor in 1994. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences since 1995. Tanksley has received the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Award, the Martin Gibbs Medal of the American Society of Plant Biologists, and the Wolf Prize in Agriculture. Tanksley was also awarded the Kumho International Science Award in 2005 for his work in molecular genetics.

Research

In 1993 Tanksley was the head of a Cornell research group that isolated and subsequently cloned a disease resistant gene in tomato plants. The research is believed to be the first successful DNA map-based cloning.