The International Society of Chemical Ecology will present Alan Renwick, a senior scientist at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research Inc. (BTI), with the Silverstein-Simeone Award for Outstanding Research Chemical Ecology at its international meeting in Marseille, France, on Nov. 16. The Boyce Thompson Institute is located on the campus.

In accepting the award, Renwick, who is also an adjunct professor of entomology at Cornell, will present a lecture, "Variable Diets and Changing Taste in Plant-Insect Relationships."

Renwick's talk will focus on how chemicals in plants change the taste sensation for insects, which could offer biochemical insight into how human taste develops and deteriorates over a lifetime.

For four decades Renwick has worked and conducted research at BTI. He joined BTI in 1960 as a research assistant, and in 1966 he became an assistant chemist. In 1973 Renwick became an associate chemist and he was promoted to chemist in 1983.

Renwick received a certificate in chemistry, the equivalent of a bachelor's degree, from the Dundee Technical College in Scotland in 1960, and he received a master's degree in chemistry from City College of New York, New York City, in 1964. He earned a doctorate in forestry, which is a combination of forest entomology, botany and biochemistry, from the University of Gšttingen, Germany, in 1970.