By Tiffany Dobbyn
Professor Shahid Siddique has been named the Howard Ferris Endowed Chair in Ecology and Management of Plant and Soil Nematodes, a position that will help support his work studying the tiny organisms that can have a significant impact on crops and soil health.
Siddique has been a faculty member with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology since 2019. He earned his Ph.D. in agriculture and biotechnology from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria and spent nearly 10 years working at the University of Bonn in Germany, where he served as a research group leader in nematology.
The newly established endowment is named in honor of Howard Ferris, a distinguished professor emeritus who spent 36 years as a UC Davis faculty member and became a leading researcher in nematode ecology. Ferris developed and maintains two major online databases used by nematologists around the world. In his new role, Siddique looks forward to continuing the work Ferris helped advance.
“It’s pretty exciting and I’m honored,” Siddique said. “At the same time, these are really big shoes to fill. Howard has done some really remarkable work. Nematology is sometimes underestimated; Howard has contributed generously to the field, and I’m hoping that I will carry forward that mission.”
Source : ucdavis.edu