College of Sciences 50th Anniverary Lecture: John Z. Kiss
Wed, 04/16/2025 - 12:37am
On Monday 14 April 2025 Dr. John Z. Kiss presented a very engaging and informative talk about his research in "Space Science". The title of his talk was Celestial Seedlings: Plant Life in the Final Frontier. This talk was the last in our series of special academic lectures celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Ray P. Authement College of Sciences.
Dr. John Z. Kiss, L3 Endowed Professor, Provost, and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Florida Institute of Technology is a plant space biologist. He has served as a Principal Investigator on eight spaceflight projects that have involved NASA as well as the European Space Agency and Roscosmos. His recent research focuses on how gravity and light responses influence each other in plants in order to better understand the cellular signaling mechanisms involved in plant tropisms—directed plant movements in response to external stimuli. His group also is interested in the role of red light as an environmental cue capable of counteracting the adverse effects of the lack of a gravity vector during spaceflight on plant growth and development. Learning how plants adapt to weightlessness and low-gravity environments is important for determining the ability of vegetation to provide a complete, sustainable, dependable and economical means for human life support in space. The ability of plants to provide a source of food and to recycle carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen may prove critical for astronauts who will live in space for months at a time. In addition, in the long term, this new knowledge of how plants grow and develop at a molecular level should lead to significant advances in agriculture on Earth.
A few photos from the lecture and reception are provided below.
Dean Azmy Ackleh giving welcoming remarks
Provost Jaimie Hebert giving welcoming remarks
Karl Hasenstein introducing the speaker
College of Sciences 50th Anniversary Cake
50th Anniversary Cake
John Kiss preparing to cut the cake
The first cut: Provost Jaimie Hebert, Dean Azmy Ackleh, John Kiss, President Joseph Savoie
Reception buffet table
