Rate My Professor Murray Grant

Professor Murray Grant is the Elizabeth Creak Chair in Food Security in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick, a position he has held since 2016. He obtained his Bachelor of Science with First Class Honours in Biochemistry from the University of Otago in 1983 and his Doctor of Philosophy in Biochemistry from the same institution in 1988. Grant's distinguished career spans multiple prestigious institutions: Research Scientist at the Applied Biotechnology Division of DSIR in New Zealand (1988–1993), EU Human Mobility Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Biology in Cologne (1993–1995), Senior Research Fellow at the Sainsbury Laboratory, John Innes Centre (1995–1996), Lecturer at the University of Leicester (1996–1998), Lecturer then Senior Lecturer at Wye College and Imperial College London (1998–2005), Reader at Imperial College London Wye Campus (2005–2006), and Professor at the University of Exeter School of Biosciences (2006–2016).

His research specializes in pathogenic and beneficial plant-microbe interactions, with a focus on bacterial pathogens such as Xanthomonas and Pseudomonas in model systems like Arabidopsis and Brassica, and the beneficial fungus Trichoderma hamatum. Key interests include pathogen effectors that suppress plant immunity, activation of resistance proteins for systemic immunity, roles of chloroplasts and endoplasmic reticulum in defense, metabolic immunity involving hormones and NAD-derived compounds, long-distance signaling, whole-plant imaging, gene editing for crop improvement, and genomics of diseases threatening food security, including ash dieback, banana Xanthomonas wilt, and enset bacterial wilt. Grant leads a multidisciplinary group integrating genetics, metabolomics, transcriptomics, and bioelectrical signaling. He has secured extensive funding from BBSRC, Royal Society, and others, including major projects on Xanthomonas threats to UK agriculture, chloroplast immunity mechanisms, ER remodeling by effectors, phylogenomic resources for plant pathogens, and the Centre for Effective Innovation in Agriculture, where he serves as co-director. Notable publications include 'Systemic immunity' (Current Opinion in Plant Biology, 2006), 'Transcriptional Dynamics Driving MAMP-Triggered Immunity and Pathogen Effector-Mediated Immunosuppression' (The Plant Cell, 2015), 'Chloroplast immunity illuminated' (New Phytologist, 2021), 'Rapid local and systemic jasmonate signalling drives the initiation and establishment of plant systemic immunity' (Nature Plants, 2026), and 'Mitochondrial ROS trigger interorganellular signaling and prime ER processes to establish enhanced plant immunity' (Science Advances, 2025). His work has garnered over 17,000 citations and an h-index of 59.