Regional Member Mycological Organizations (Regional MMOs). Regional MMOs have important roles in the IMA, and hold additional meetings in the interim periods between International Mycological Congresses. Regional MMOs are appointed by the IMA Executive Committee as specified under para 5.1 of the IMA Statutes. Regional MMOs comprise a national representative for each country in the region; a Chairman and Secretary are to be elected by the national representatives from amongst their number. Procedures for the establishment and methods of operation of Regional Committees are subject to ratification by the Executive Committee.
Regional Member Mycological Organizations
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African RMMO Prof. Dr. Francisca Iziegbe Okungbowa |
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Prof. Okungbowa is a professor of mycology and plant pathology at the University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria. She currently heads the mycology and plant pathology research unit of her Department. She is also the Team Leader of the Plant Protection and Bioresources Research Group at her University. She is presently the Vice President of the African Mycological Association (AfriMA). Prof. Okungbowa is a member of the American Phytopathological Society, American Society for Microbiology and the International Society for Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions. Her research is related to food security/safety, environmental health, and biodiversity conservation studies spanning through studies of fungi such as Ceratocystis, Macrophomina and Fusarium, and crops such as tomato, oil palm, groundnut, cow pea, and leafy vegetables. Her research also includes plant-pathogen interactions and biocontrol of diseases in crops. |
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Asian RMMO Prof. Saisamorn Lumyong |
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Prof. Saisamorn Lumyong is a microbiologist, which received her PhD in 1993 from Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan. She undertook a short-term research visiting funded via the JSPS fund from the Japanese government form 1994-2000. She established a successful research network collaboration with scientists from Japan, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, UK, USA, and China. She is the director of the Center of Excellence in Microbial Diversity and Sustainable Utilization at Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand, since 2020. Her research interests are in microbial taxonomy, especially fungi, physiology, ecology and application in agriculture and biotechnology. |
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Australasian RMMO Jonathan Plett |
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Associate Prof. Jonathan Plett did his doctoral work at Queen’s University in Canada followed by a post-doctoral research position at L’Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRAE; France). Jonathan is a faculty member of the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment at Western Sydney University in Australia. Jonathan is a pioneer in decoding the signalling exchange between beneficial microbes and their host plants, with a specific focus on how microbes use a variety of proteins, metabolites and nucleic acids to circumvent plant immune responses. Outcomes of this research are important for screening new plant lines to find the ‘sweet spot’ in immune response that enables plants to maximise nutritional benefits from mutualistic microbes without compromising disease resistance. These results will result in more productive tree plantations and agricultural systems. |
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European RMMO Prof. David Minter |
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Latin American RMMO Prof. Dr. Jhonathan Paul Gamboa Trujillo |
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North American RMMO Prof. Elizabeth Arnold |
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A. Elizabeth Arnold (Betsy) is a professor in the School of Plant Sciences and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona, where she serves as Curator of the Robert L. Gilbertson Mycological Herbarium. Betsy earned her PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Arizona in 2002, where she was a US National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow. Supported by a NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Microbial Biology, she was a postdoc at Duke University in 2003-2004. In 2005 she joined the University of Arizona faculty. She has received recognition from professional societies for her work in mycology, including research (Alexopolous Prize, Buller Medal) and teaching (Weston Award). She is active in initiatives that promote inclusion in the sciences, including outreach to tribal colleges, high schools, and the public. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Mycological Society of America (MSA), and she served as MSA president in 2022-2023. |
Sustaining Member Mycological Organizations
A Member Mycological Organization (MMO) may become a Sustaining Member Mycological Organization (SMMO). The cost of a SMMO membership is CHF 600 per year at present and includes representation in the Executive Board and one vote. Thus, the SMMOs are not only an important part of our administration but help to maintain our interaction with all members world wide.
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![]() Prof. Dr. Paul Dyer |
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Prof. Dyer has interests in applied mycology, seeking to promote and improve beneficial fungi used in foods but also control detrimental fungi responsible for animal and plant diseases. He holds a PhD in Mycology from the University of Cambridge (1992) and has since been based at the University of Nottingham (UK), with sabbatical spells in New Zealand and with the Australian Antarctic Division. He is an editor for Fungal Biology Reviews and IMA Fungus. His research is centred on three themes: (1) Evolutionary genetics and control of sexual reproduction in filamentous fungi (including lichen-forming fungi); (2) Food mycology, seeking to exploit newly discovered sexual cycles and complementary approaches for strain improvement in Aspergillus, Penicillium and Fusarium species; (3) Medical mycology, seeking to understand the evolution of antifungal resistance in pathogens and the role of sexual and asexual processes in gene flow. |
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Prof. Dr. Claus Bässler |
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Prof. Claus Bässler is a fungal ecologist, Ph.D 2008 Technical University Berlin, Habilitation 2019 Technical University Munich, 2003-2014 Scientist at the department of research and conservation, National Park Bavarian Forest, 2009-2019 Lecturer at the Technical University of Munich, 2014-2020 Deputy head of the department of research and conservation at the National Park Bavarian Forest, 2020-2023 Professor for Conservation Biology at Institute of Ecology, Diversity and Evolution, Goethe University Frankfurt, since 2023 Professor for Fungal Ecology at the University of Bayreuth |
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![]() Prof. Hyang Burm Lee PhD |
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Prof. Lee carried out research in basic and applied aspects of mycology, fungal diversity, mycotoxicology and phytopathology for more than 30+ years. From 2006, he has been serving Chonnam National University, Korea and had established ‘Environmental Microbiology Lab’ and researched on bioactive materials derived from fungi, environment-friendly plant protection. PhD 1996, Chungnam National University, Korea; Postdoctoral fellow 1997-1998, Cranfield University, UK and 1999-2002, Korea Research Institute of Bioscience & Biotechnology; Research professor 2002-2006, Seoul National University; Visiting scholar since 2021, Institute of Basic Science, Korea; Vice President and President 2020-2021, Korean Society of Mycology, Korea; Chairperson of Asian Mycological Congress 2023, Vice President of Asian Mycological Association since 2020; Korea representative of International Mycological Association since 2023; Assistant professor in 2006 and Tenured full professor since 2015, Chonnam National University, Korea. His interest is in discovery of undiscovered fungal taxa including basal lineage, searching for novel metabolites and enzymes, medical and biofunctional food sources from diverse environmental microorganisms. He has an internationally recognised mycobank, CNUFC and collection centre of excellence in specialised areas of the basic mycology as well as applications using fungal metabolites and the genes with omics (as antimicrobial, antiinflammatory, antioxidant and enzymatic agents) of microbial biotechnology in medicine, agriculture, agrifood, environment and health sectors. |
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The Mycological Society of America Dr. Mary Catherine Aime |
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Cathie Aime is a systematic mycologist, PhD 2001 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA; post-doc 2001-2003 at the University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; Research Molecular Mycologist at the United States Department of Agriculture, Beltsville, MD, USA, 2003-2007; Associate Professor of Mycology at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA, 2007-2012; Professor of Mycology at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA since 2012; Director of the Arthur and Kriebel Herbaria, Purdue University, since 2012; Program Officer of the U.S. National Science Foundation, Alexandria VA, USA 2022-2024; Fellow of the Explorer’s Club since 2007, Fellow of the Linnean Society of London since 2009, Fellow of the Mycological Society of America since 2012, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 2020; President of the Mycological Society of America 2023-2024. Her research combines expeditionary field work and traditional approaches with molecular genetics and multi-omics approaches to understand fungal diversity and evolution. Areas of specialization include tropical basidiomycetes, systematics of early diverging basidiomycete lineages (including smuts and yeasts), evolution of rust fungi, and epidemiology of tropical tree diseases. |
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Dr. Yuuri Hirooka |
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Dr. Yuuri Hirooka is a plant pathologist and a mycologist. He obtained his PhD in 2007 at the Tokyo University of Agriculture, in Tokyo, Japan. He did several post-doctoral fellowships: from 2007-2008 at NIAS Genebank culture collection (MAFF), in Tsukuba, Japan; from 2008-2011 at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the University of Maryland, in Maryland, USA; from 2011-2013 at Forestry & Forest Products Research Institute, in Tsukuba, Japan; from 2013-2015 at the University of Ottawa and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), in Ontario, Canada. In 2015, he became an Assistant Professor at Hosei University, in Tokyo, Japan and established the Laboratory of Fungal Plant Disease Diagnosis. He has been an Associate Professor at Hosei University since 2017. His research interest is in evolution, phylogeny, genomics, and identification of plant-associated fungi. |
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Lei Cai (Ph.D.) |
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Lei Cai received his PhD in Microbiology from the University of Hong Kong in 2006. He then worked as a Scientist/Senior Scientist at Novozymes (2006-2010). Since 2010, he has been a Research Professor and Principal Investigator (PI) at the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMCAS), and has been the Director of the State Key Laboratory of Mycology (SKLM) since 2017 and the Director of the State Key Laboratory of Microbial Diversity and Resource Utilisation (SKLMD) since 2023. Prof. Lei Cai received the IMA Young Mycologist Award (Keisuke Tubaki Medal) in 2011 and the Outstanding Young Scientist Fund from the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2017. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Mycology and Editor of Stud Mycol, Fungal Divers, Fungal Syst Evol, mLife and iMeta. His research focuses on the diversity and systematics of fungi, especially those closely related to plants and the environment. |
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Mycological Society of the Republic of China Dr. Sung-Yuan Hsieh |
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Dr. Sung-Yuan Hsieh is a Taiwanese Mycologist currently serving as the President of the Mycological Society of the Republic of China (Taiwan). He got his bachelor's and MS degrees from the Department of Plant Pathology and Entomology at National Taiwan University and his PhD from the School of Biological Science at the University of Portsmouth, UK, in 2000. Since 1993, he works at the Bioresource and Collection and Research Center (BCRC) at the Food Industry Research and Development Institute (FIRDI), Hsinchu, Taiwan. He is the leader of the Mycology group at BCRC since 2010 and is serving as the Director of BCRC since 2020. His research interests include marine and freshwater fungi, Oomycetes and Thraustochytriaceae in mangrove ecosystems, fungi in fermentation, medicinal and industrial applications, bioactive compounds, culture collection, and cultivation technologies for edible mushrooms, morphogenesis and sexual reproduction in fungi, and electron microscopy. |
Member Mycological Organizations
Our Member Mycological Organizations (MMO) are most important to communicate with our members and they support our work with CHF 90 per year. Each mycological society, association or organization having mycological interests may become a MMO after informal application and approvment by the Executive Board.
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Denmark |
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Netherlands |
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Finland |
Indonesian Mycological Society Indonesia |
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India
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Norway |
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Royal Flemish Mycological Society (KVMV) Research Group Mycology |
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Southern African Society for Plant Pathology South Africa |
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Swedish Mycological Society
Sweden |