Rate My Professor Francois Lutzoni

Francois M. Lutzoni is a Professor of Biology in the Department of Biology at Duke University. He received his B.S. from Grinnell College in 1987, M.S. from the University of Ottawa in 1990, and Ph.D. in Botany/Genetics from Duke University in 1995. Lutzoni directs the Lutzoni Lab, which focuses on the evolution, ecology, and genomics of fungal symbioses, with emphasis on lichens and their microbiomes, endophytic fungi in land plants, and endolichenic fungi. His research employs phylogenetics to study lichen-forming and allied fungi, mycobiont-photobiont interactions, coevolution, transitions from mutualism to parasitism or saprobism, and the roles of mutualistic associations in fungal diversification. Key projects include the NSF-funded Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life (AFTOL), investigations into nitrogen fixation in Arctic lichens and mosses, ice-nucleating agents in lichens, and rapid radiations in cyanobacteria. Lutzoni has advanced phylogenetic methods, including Bayesian inference, alignments of ambiguously aligned regions, and tests for data congruence.

Throughout his career at Duke University, where he advanced to Professor of Biology in 2015, Lutzoni has earned prestigious awards, including the Mycological Society of America Fellow (2016), C. J. Alexopoulos Prize (2005), Edward Tuckerman Award from the American Bryological and Lichenological Society (2009), NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award (2002), and multiple Duke University Senior Honor Awards (2017, 2018). His highly influential publications include 'Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life: progress, classification, and evolution of subcellular traits' (American Journal of Botany, 2004), 'Reconstructing the early evolution of Fungi using a six-gene phylogeny' (Nature, 2006), 'A higher-level phylogenetic classification of the Fungi' (Mycological Research, 2007), and 'Major fungal lineages are derived from lichen symbiotic ancestors' (Nature, 2001). With over 29,000 citations, his work has profoundly shaped systematic biology, lichenology, and evolutionary studies of symbiosis. Lutzoni has served as Associate Editor for Mycologia, on the editorial board of International Journal of Plant Sciences, and as a reviewer for journals such as Science, Nature Reviews Microbiology, and Systematic Biology, as well as NSF panels.