Rate My Professor Gwyn Beattie

Gwyn Beattie is the Robert Earle Buchanan Distinguished Professor of Bacteriology for Research and Nomenclature and a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology, Entomology, and Microbiology at Iowa State University. She earned her B.A. in Chemistry from Carleton College in 1985 and her Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991. After completing postdoctoral research in microbial ecology at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1991 to 1995, she joined Iowa State University in 1995 as an assistant professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology. She was promoted to associate professor and then to full professor in 2010, and she holds the endowed Buchanan chair since 2006. Beattie served as chair of the Interdepartmental Microbiology Graduate Program from 2003 to 2006 and as interim chair of the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology from 2020 to 2021.

Her research specializes in the genomics and ecology of plant-associated microbes, elucidating factors that drive successful plant colonization and influence plant health. Ongoing projects explore the biology of vascular pathogens Erwinia tracheiphila and Serratia marcescens, root microbiome assembly under abiotic stress, and light-sensing mechanisms enhancing the ecological fitness of foliar pathogen Pseudomonas syringae. Notable publications include “Light cues induce protective anticipation of environmental water loss in terrestrial bacteria” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023), “Seeing the light: The roles of red- and blue-light sensing in plant microbes” (Annual Review of Phytopathology, 2018), and “Horizontal gene acquisitions, mobile element proliferation, and genome decay in the host-restricted plant pathogen Erwinia tracheiphila” (Genome Biology and Evolution, 2016). Beattie is a Fellow of the American Phytopathological Society (2020) and recipient of the Iowa State University Regents Award for Faculty Excellence (2018). She serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Annual Review of Phytopathology (2023-2026) and on the Board of Directors of the International Alliance for Phytobiomes Research. Additionally, she has organized international conferences on phytobiomes and phyllosphere microbiology and teaches courses such as Bacterial-Plant Interactions, Microbial Ecology, and Biology of Microorganisms.