Thornton-Massa Lecture Series
21st Thornton Massa Lecture Series
The College of Agricultural Sciences and the College of Natural Sciences‘ Department of Biology hosted the 21st Annual Thornton Massa Lecture on February 5th, 2024 at the Fort Collins CSU Campus.
The 2024 lecturer was Dr. Bailey-Serres. Bailey-Serres is a plant biologist known for her research on mechanisms of plant adaptive responses to environmental stresses. She is recognized for the in-depth dissection of the function of SUBMERGENCE 1A gene, responsible for survival of rice plants under prolonged submergence as evidenced by its successful use in breeding programs that has led to stabilizing rice grain yield in flood-prone regions of Asia. In addition, she established technologies to uncover the activity of genes in specific cell types of multicellular organisms, through the capture of ribosomes and the associated mRNAs. Bailey-Serres was born and raised in California, graduated from the University of Utah with a BS in biology and the University of Edinburgh with a PhD in botany.
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.