Rate My Professor Melissa Mitchum

Mitchum obtained her B.S. in Biology from the University of Puget Sound in 1993, M.S. in Plant Pathology from the University of Nebraska in 1995, Ph.D. in Plant Pathology with a minor in Biotechnology from North Carolina State University in 2001, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Developmental, Cell, and Molecular Biology Group at Duke University in 2003. She held previous academic appointments at the University of Missouri before joining the University of Georgia, where she was named to the Barry Bustillo Distinguished Professorship in Plant Nematology in 2025. Her contributions have earned her election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2024 for advancements in understanding plant-nematode interactions. With over 9,800 citations on Google Scholar, key publications include 'Nematode effector proteins: an emerging paradigm of parasitism' (New Phytologist, 2013), 'Phytoparasitic Nematode Control of Plant Hormone Pathways' (Plant Physiology, 2019), 'Identification of a stylet-secreted effector protein family as peptide hormone mimics in plants' (PNAS, 2026), and 'Candidate genes at the Rmi1 locus for resistance to Meloidogyne incognita in soybean' (Theoretical and Applied Genetics, 2025). She co-directs a $1.2 million NSF-NIFA Plant Bioproduction Initiative award to develop novel strategies against soybean cyst nematode and contributes to soybean performance tests evaluating nematode resistance.