Beside the officers, RMMOs and SMMOs, the Executive Committee is represented by a maximum of twelve non-office holding members, serving a maximum of two consecutive terms, elected by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Executive Committee from nominations (received not later than the date notified to Congress participants) from the Sustaining Member Mycological Organizations (SMMOs), MMOs, the Executive Committee, or individual members. The elected members are particularly valuable, because their immediate contact to the mycologists world wide and therefore facilitate the communication of the IMA.
Elected Members of the Executive Committee
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Dr. Ahmed M. Abdel-Azeem |
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Dr. Ahmed M. Abdel-Azeem is a professor of mycology at the Botany and Microbiology Department, Faculty of Science, Suez Canal University, Egypt. He is the founder and president of Arab Society for Fungal Conservation, and the president of the African Mycological Association (AfriMA). He is a member of the European Mycological Association (EMA) and the Mycological Society of America. He is a founding member of the International Society for Fungal Conservation, he is the founder of the Pan Arab Mycologists, he founded Egypt's National Fungus day, African Annual Fungus Day and many mycologists' networks like Egyptian, Iraqi, Algerian, Libyan and Pakistani networks. Abdel-Azeem’s research focuses on ecology, taxonomy, biology, and conservation of fungi, especially on the members of the phylum Ascomycota. He is a member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Specialist Group for Cup Fungi, Truffles & their Allies. Also, he is a member of Fungal Conservation Committee (FunCC) of IUCN. |
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Dr. Irene Barnes |
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Irene Barnes is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology (BGM), at the University of Pretoria. She is a research leader in the Tree Protection Cooperative Program (TPCP), the Centre of Excellence in Plant Health Biotechnology (CPHB), and leads the Kiwi Protection Program (KPP) at the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI). Her research focuses on the taxonomy, phylogenetics, and population biology of fungal pathogens that infect forest trees. This work includes determining the biodiversity of fungi and describing new fungal species, tracing the infection pathways of forest pathogens through population genetic studies, and investigating pathogenicity and host specificity. Fungi of particular interest in her group include pine needle pathogens and vascular wilt pathogens. She holds leadership positions in the African Mycological Society (AfriMa) and the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) in the Division of Forest Health |
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Prof. Dr. Robert Luecking Germany |
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Prof. Dr. Allison Walker USA |
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Prof. Dr. Giovanna Cristina Varese Italy |
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Bevan Weir |
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Dr Bevan Weir is a Senior Scientist and the Research Leader for the Nationally Significant Databases and Collections at New Zealand’s environment-focussed government research institute Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research. He is curator of New Zealand’s national culture collection of fungi and bacteria, the ICMP, and is a councillor of the New Zealand mycological society. Bevan’s research interests are systematics and genomics of plant pathogens, in particular the genus Colletotrichum. He has had an active role in most of the major incursions of plant pathogens in New Zealand in the past decade, working closely with central government agencies. In his spare time he also can’t get away from mycology and is either hunting mushrooms in the native forest or brewing craft beer. |
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Prof. Dr. Irina Druzhinina UK |
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Prof. Dr. Tatiana Gibertoni |
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Tatiana Gibertoni is an Agaricomycotina taxonomist, PhD in 2004 by the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE) and in 2009 by the Università degli Studi di Pavia with post-docs internships at the Università degli Studi di Bologna from 2004-2006 and at the Natural History Museum of Oslo in 2011; full professor at UFPE since 2006; vice-curator of HURM since 2006. Her research interests are taxonomy, systematics, ecology, conservation and biotechnology applications of Agaricomycotina. |
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Prof. Dr. Lei Cai China |
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Dr. Kentaro Hosaka Japan |
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Prof. Dr. Priscilla Chaverri-Echandi USA |
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Dr. Andrey Yurkov |
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Dr. Andrey Yurkov is a mycologist working with yeasts, PhD 2006 Moscow State University, Russia; post-doctoral fellow 2007-2012 Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany; post-doctoral fellow 2012 Universidade Nova de Lisboa and curator of the Portuguese Culture Collection (PYCC); Group leader “Fungi and Fungal Systematics” and curator of mycological collection of Leibniz Institute DSMZ - German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures since 2012. His research interests include yeast ecology, evolution and systematics. He is a executive board member of the World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC), executive board member International Union of Microbiological Societies (IUMS), a member of the International Commission on Taxonomy of Fungi (ICTF) of IUMS and the International Commission on Yeasts (ICY) of IUMS. |
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