Jason Stajich, an IIGB/CEPCEB associate professor of plant pathology and microbiology, has been awarded the 2014 Alexopoulos Prize by the Mycological Society of America, a scientific society dedicated to the study of fungi of all kinds including mushrooms, molds, truffles, yeasts, lichens, plant pathogens, and medically important fungi.

The award is peer-nominated and each year recognizes an outstanding early-career mycologist. Stajich received the award last month in East Lansing, Michigan, at the annual meeting of the Mycological Society of America. The award consists of a plaque and a monetary award of $1,000. Nominees for the Alexopoulos Prize are judged on the quality, originality and quantity of their published work.

Stajich received his doctoral degree at Duke University in 2006. He held a postdoctoral appointment at UC Berkeley from 2006 to 2009. His research interests include using genomic approaches to study fungal biology and evolution, including fungal cell wall evolution, the evolution of multicellularity in fungi, and human pathogenic fungi. His work also focuses on building new methods for comparative and evolutionary genomics. He also co-leads a project to generate genome sequence and analyze 1000 fungal genomes.

Stajich is the recipient of a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship and a postdoctoral research fellowship from the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at UC Berkeley. Since joining UCR, he has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the W. M. Keck Foundation.

At the annual meeting of the Mycological Society of America last month, he presented research on the evolution of the fungal cell wall examining early diverging lineages of fungi. His graduate student, Steven Ahrendt, presented a poster on the inhibitory properties of a Chytridiomycota fungus that affects growth of some filamentous fungi. Ahrendt, who worked closely with Stajich on the research, won the best graduate student poster award.