Dr. Ralph Dean - Center Director

Dr. Ralph Dean

Dr. Dean serves as Director of the Center for Integrated Fungal Research, is a William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at NCSU, and  serves as Director of the Fungal Genomics Lab. Dr. Dean holds an Adjunct Faculty position in the Department of Genetics at NCSU and at the Clemson University Genomics Institute.

Dr. Dean is a Fellow of the American Phytopathological Society, a recipient of the Secretary's Award of Honor from the USDA, and the Huxley Memorial Medal from Imperial College, London.  He holds two U.S. patents; "PCR-Based method for identifying a fusarium wilt-resistant genotype in plants" and "Method of diagnosing gummy stem blight in plants using a polymerase chain reaction assay".

Dr. Dean has over 90 peer-reviewed publications, nine book chapters and review articles, and over 300 published abstracts. Dr. Dean has served as an editor for several international journals and is currently Senior Editor of the journal of Molecular Plant Pathology.

Dr. Dean is a regular member of National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Agriculture genetics and genomics grant proposal review panels.

Dr. Dean acts as Chair of the International Rice Blast Genome Consortium, and is a member of the International Phytophthora Genome Consortium, the International Rice Blast Genome Policy Committee, and the Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics Graduate Program at North Carolina State University.

Research projects in Dr. Dean's labs have resulted in major breakthroughs, which have been published in notable scientific journals including Science and Nature. More information on Dr. Dean's research can be found at  www.fungalgenomics.ncsu.edu

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