The 2020 BML Planning Committee is exuberant to announce that this year's Emerging Leader in Plant Sciences (ELIPS) award goes to Dr. Michael Kantar, 2011 UMN Plant Breeding and Genetics alumnus and current Assistant Professor at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.
Dr. Kanter's impactful scientific work developing new and improving old crops perfectly aligns with the celebrated values of Dr. Borlaug to keep the world fed. Additionally, Dr. Kantar also serves as an outspoken representative for people of color in the broader biological sciences perhaps best exemplified in by one of his most recent co-authored publications "Strategies and support for Black, Indigenous, and people of colour in ecology and evolutionary biology".
In this unprecedented year of 2020 where we have seen massive disruption to our global agricultural systems as well as heightened global civil unrest sparked by the killing of Goerge Floyd by police here in our beloved city of Minneapolis, we, the committee, believe Dr. Kantar to be an obvious and timely choice. Congratulations Dr. Kantar, may you, your work and your story continue to uplift the people of our world and inspire future generations of students to come.