Gregory B. Martin has been appointed a joint professor of plant pathology at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research Inc. and Cornell University's New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Martin began working in his laboratory at the Boyce Thompson Institute, located on Cornell's campus, this month.

Martin has focused his research on the molecular basis of disease resistance in plants, signal transduction, genomics and the applications of genetic engineering. Formerly an associate professor of agronomy at Purdue University in Lafayette, Ind., Martin won the 1997 Herbert Newby McCoy Award for Outstanding Research of the Year at Purdue University. This year he lectured at the Royal Society in London.

As a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in plant biology from 1989 until 1992, Martin worked at Cornell with Steven Tanksley, the Cornell Liberty Hyde Bailey professor of plant breeding.

In 1983, Martin was a visiting researcher for the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Bean/Cowpea Collaborative Research Program at the University of Malawi, Lilongwe, Malawi.

Martin earned his doctoral degree in molecular biology, his master's degree in plant breeding and his bachelor's degree in crop science from the Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.