Dr. Daniel Buonaiuto and Dr. Pierre Jacob
This Fall 2025 semester, two new faculty are welcome to the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, Dr. Daniel Buonaiuto and Dr. Jacob Pierrie.
Dr. Danaiel Buonaiuto, Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist, earned his Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA in 2022. He is broadly interested in understanding how basic interactions and functions of natural ecological systems can be applied in the practical context of various fields of land management and horticulture. In the Plant Ecology in Practice Lab at UMD, Dan, along with his wonderful collaborators and students--asks fundamental questions about how plants respond to global change, and how these responses affect plant community structure and function in both natural and managed systems.
Through his work with the University of Maryland Extension, Maryland Invasive Species Council, and the Northeast Regional Invasive Species and Climate Change Network, Dr. Buonaiuto and his group aim to translate basic ecological science into applications that can help growers and practitioners achieve more effective, efficient and sustainable operations.
For more information about Dr. Buonaiuto's research and extension programs check out the lab group’s page.
Dr. Pierre Jacob joins the Department in August 2025. His B.S and M.S. degrees focused on fundamental cell biology and genetics. His main interest is to understand how cells perceive and adapt to their environments through complex signaling cascades.
During his Ph.D., he specialized in plant adaptation to combinations of abiotic stress and collaborated with a seed company to discover alleles that could provide multiple stress resistance in the field. He then came to the USA for his postdoc in the Dangl lab at UNC-CH. There, developed a complementary expertise in plant immunity. Dan's goal is to discover the mechanisms that allow plant cells to regulate resistance, growth and cell death in stressful environments, and ultimately apply this knowledge to crop improvement.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Daniel B. and Dr. Pierre J. to the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture!
