Thornton-Massa Lecture Series
22nd Thornton-Massa Lecture Series
Colorado State University is proud to welcome Dr. José R. Dinneny as the distinguished speaker for the 2025 Thornton-Massa Lecture Series. This two-day event offers a unique opportunity to explore the future of agriculture and plant biology through the lens of a world-renowned scientist.
Public Lecture: Reimagining Agriculture in Times of Population Growth and Decline
- Date: Sunday, September 28, 2025
- Time: 3:00 p.m.
- Location: Lory Student Center Theatre
- Open to: All
Scientific Lecture: Understanding the Cellular and Organ-Scale Mechanisms Plants Use to Survive with Limited Water
- Date: Monday, September 29, 2025
- Time: 3:00 p.m.
- Location: BHSCI A101
- Open to: CSU Faculty, Staff, and Students
The Dinneny lab investigates how cellular and developmental processes enable plants to survive limited and heterogeneous water availability. I will present work on mechanisms that protect cells from hyperosmotic stress by maintaining plasma membrane–cell wall attachments, as well as studies on how roots sense and respond to spatial variation in soil moisture through local regulation of branching and anatomy. Together, these findings illustrate multi-scale plant adaptation strategies and highlight pathways for potential crop improvement.
Watch the 2024 Thornton-Massa Lecture
Thornton-Massa Lecture History
The annual Thornton-Massa lecture series honors the late Dr. Emil Massa and the late Bruce and Mildred Thornton, who all shared a passion for biodiversity, plant genetics, agriculture, and horticulture. These interests inspired their respective families to create an endowed public lecture series CSU, hosted jointly by the College of Agricultural Sciences and the College of Natural Sciences.
Massa was a Denver-based physician who also had a keen interest in plants. His study of plant genetics, biodiversity, and breeding led him to become involved in supporting the Denver Botanic Garden, the People Park program and this lecture series.
Bruce and Mildred Thornton both worked at the Colorado State Seed Laboratory. Mildred received her undergraduate degree from, as it was then known, Colorado State College, before getting her master’s in botany. She then went to work at the Federal Seed Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Bruce was a member of Colorado State College’s faculty and on staff of the Agricultural Experiment Station. Bruce and Mildred married in 1930, and 10 years later, Bruce became head of the Colorado State Seed Laboratory. When he retired in 1961, Mildred took over as director of the laboratory.