John F. Leslie is a University Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Plant Pathology at Kansas State University, with expertise on fungi in the genus Fusarium, their genetics, physiology, and molecular biology, and the toxins they produce. In 2022-2023 he served as a Jefferson Science Fellow in the State Department’s Office of Global Food Security. Prof. Leslie has worked in countries on every continent and has authored or co-authored 176 refereed journal articles and seven books with ~24,000 total citations. Since 2000 he has annually organized the Fusarium Laboratory Workshops that have trained > 750 people from 78 countries in methods to work with these fungi. He has been a Senior Fulbright Scholar in Australia, is a foreign member of the Hungarian Academy of Sci-ences, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Phytopathological Society, The Royal Botanic Garden (Sydney), and St. Paul’s College (University of Sydney).
