Liam Dolan One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: is a senior group leader at the Gregor Mendel Institute of the

Austrian Academy of Sciences The Austrian Academy of Sciences (; ÖAW) is a legal entity under the special protection of the Republic of Austria. According to the statutes of the Academy its mission is to promote the sciences and humanities in every respect and in every fi ...

. He previously served as

Sherardian Professor of Botany The Sherardian Chair of Botany is a professorship at the University of Oxford that was established in 1734. It was created following an endowment by William Sherard on his death in 1728. In his will, Sherard stipulated that the first holder of t ...

in the Department of Biology at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

and a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

Magdalen College, Oxford Magdalen College ( ) is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by Bishop of Winchester William of Waynflete. It is one of the wealthiest Oxford colleges, as of 2022, and ...

from 2009 to 2021.

Education

Dolan was educated at

University College Dublin University College Dublin (), commonly referred to as UCD, is a public research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a collegiate university, member institution of the National University of Ireland. With 38,417 students, it is Ireland's largest ...

and the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

where he was awarded a PhD in 1991 for

genetic analysis Genetic analysis is the overall process of studying and researching in fields of science that involve genetics and molecular biology. There are a number of applications that are developed from this research, and these are also considered parts ...

of leaf development in the cotton plant ''

Gossypium barbadense ''Gossypium barbadense'' is one of several species of cotton. It is in the Malvaceae, mallow family. It has been cultivated since antiquity, but has been especially prized since a form with particularly long fibers was developed in the 19th cent ...

'' supervised by Scott Poethig.

Career and research

Following his PhD, Dolan spent three years doing

postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary acade ...

at the

John Innes Centre The John Innes Centre (JIC), located in Norwich, Norfolk, England, is an independent centre for research and training in plant and microbial science founded in 1910. It is a registered charity (No 223852) grant-aided by the Biotechnology and B ...

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich ...

. After 13 years as an independent project leader in Norwich, Dolan moved to

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

as the

in 2009 to 2021. Dolan's research aims to define genetic mechanisms that control the development of plants and determine how these mechanisms have changed since plants colonised the land 500 million years ago. Dolan's research has been funded by the

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, is a non-departmental public body (NDPB), and is the largest UK public funder of non-medical bioscience. It predominantly funds science, scient ...

(BBSRC) and the

Natural Environment Research Council The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) is a British Research Councils UK, research council that supports research, training and knowledge transfer activities in the environmental sciences. History NERC began in 1965 when several envir ...

(NERC). Dolan has made outstanding contributions to the understanding of the development and

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

of land plant rooting systems. He was the first to define the precise cellular

body plan A body plan, (), or ground plan is a set of morphology (biology), morphological phenotypic trait, features common to many members of a phylum of animals. The vertebrates share one body plan, while invertebrates have many. This term, usually app ...

of the ''

Arabidopsis ''Arabidopsis'' (rockcress) is a genus in the family Brassicaceae. They are small flowering plants related to cabbage and mustard. This genus is of great interest since it contains thale cress (''Arabidopsis thaliana''), one of the model organ ...

'' root and discovered the

molecular genetic Molecular genetics is a branch of biology that addresses how differences in the structures or expression of DNA molecules manifests as variation among organisms. Molecular genetics often applies an "investigative approach" to determine the str ...

mechanism governing

root hair Soil biology Root hairs or absorbent hairs, are outgrowths of epidermal cells, specialized cells at the tip of a plant root. They are lateral extensions of a single cell and are only rarely branched. They are found in the region of maturation, of ...

cell differentiation Cellular differentiation is the process in which a stem cell changes from one type to a differentiated one. Usually, the cell changes to a more specialized type. Differentiation happens multiple times during the development of a multicellular ...

. He demonstrated that this mechanism is ancient and was the first to discover the mechanism that controlled the development of the earliest land plant rooting systems that caused dramatic climate change over 400 million years ago. These pivotal discoveries illuminate the interrelationships between the development of plants, their evolution and the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

System. With Alison Mary Smith, George Coupland, Nicholas Harberd,

Jonathan D. G. Jones Jonathan Dallas George Jones (born 14 July 1954) is a senior scientist at the Sainsbury Laboratory and a professor at the University of East Anglia using molecular and genetic approaches to study disease resistance in plants. Education Jones ...

Cathie Martin Catherine Rosemary Martin (born April 1955) is a Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and project leader at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, co-ordinating research into the relationship between diet and health and ho ...

, Robert Sablowski and Abigail Amey he is a co-author of the textbook ''Plant Biology''.

Awards and honours

Dolan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014. Dolan was elected a member of the

European Molecular Biology Organization The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) is a professional, non-profit organization of more than 2,100 life scientists. Its goal is to promote research in life science and enable international exchange between scientists. It co-funds cour ...

(EMBO) in 2009, and was awarded the President's Medal of the

Society for Experimental Biology The Society for Experimental Biology is a learned society for animal, cell and plant biologists. It was founded in 1923 at Birkbeck College to "promote the art and science of experimental biology in all its branches". It aims to demonstrate the im ...

(SEB) in 2001. In 2024, Dolan was elected a member of the

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dolan, Liam Fellows of the Royal Society Living people Members of the European Molecular Biology Organization Sherardian Professors of Botany Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford Alumni of University College Dublin University of Pennsylvania alumni Year of birth missing (living people)