Ian Thomas Baldwin (born 1958) is an American ecologist.

Early life

Baldwin's parents were the medieval historians Jenny Jochens and

John W. Baldwin John Wesley Baldwin (July 13, 1929 – February 8, 2015) was an American historian. He was Charles Homer Haskins professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University. Life and career Born in Chicago, Baldwin received his Johns Hopkins Universi ...

Scientific career

Baldwin studied biology and chemistry at

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College ( ) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the America ...

in Hanover, New Hampshire, and graduated 1981 with an AB. In 1989 he graduated with a PhD in

chemical ecology A chemical substance is a unique form of matter with constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Chemical substances may take the form of a single element or chemical compounds. If two or more chemical substances can be combin ...

from

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

, Ithaca, New York, Section of Neurobiology and Behavior. He was an Assistant (1989), Associate (1993) and Full Professor (1996) in the Department of Biology at

SUNY Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo (commonly referred to as UB, University at Buffalo, and sometimes SUNY Buffalo) is a public research university in Buffalo and Amherst, New York, United States. The university was founded in 1846 as ...

. In 1996 he became the Founding Director of the

Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology The Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology is located on Beutenberg Campus in Jena, Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the n ...

where he heads the Department of Molecular Ecology. In 1999 he was appointed Honorary Professor at

Friedrich Schiller University The University of Jena, officially the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (, abbreviated FSU, shortened form ''Uni Jena''), is a public research university located in Jena, Thuringia, Germany. The university was established in 1558 and is cou ...

in Jena, Germany. In 2002 he founded the International Max Planck Research School at the Max Planck Institute in Jena. Baldwin's scientific work is devoted to understanding the traits that allow plants to survive in the real world. To achieve this, he has developed a molecular toolbox for the native tobacco, ''

Nicotiana attenuata ''Nicotiana attenuata'' is a species of wild tobacco known by the common name coyote tobacco. It is native to western North America from British Columbia to Texas and northern Mexico, where it grows in many types of habitat. It is a glandular a ...

'' (coyote tobacco), and a graduate program that trains "genome-enabled field biologists" to combine genomic and molecular genetic tools with field work to understand the genes that matter for plant-herbivore, -pollinator, -plant, -microbial interactions in nature. He has been a driver behind the

Open Access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

publication efforts of the

Max Planck Society The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. Founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, it was renamed to the M ...

and is one of the senior editors of the

open access journal Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

eLife ''eLife'' is a not-for-profit, peer-reviewed, open access, scientific journal, science publisher for the Biomedicine, biomedical and life sciences. It was established at the end of 2012 by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Max Planck Society, ...

. Since November 2020, the Department of Molecular Ecology is led by Acting Director

Sarah O’Connor Sarah E. O'Connor is an American natural product chemist working to understand the molecular machinery involved in assembling important plant natural products – vinblastine, morphine, iridoids, secologanin – and how changing the enzymes invo ...

. The former Director Ian Baldwin now serves as Leader of the Research Group of a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society (FG WiMi, Forschungsgruppe Wissenschaftliches Mitglied) and he continues his research at the Institute in this role.

Awards and honors

* Presidential Young Investigator Award 1991 * Silverstein-Simeone Award of th
International Society of Chemical Ecology
1998 * Extraordinary member of the

Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (), abbreviated BBAW, is the official academic society for the natural sciences and humanities for the German states of Berlin and Brandenburg. Housed in three locations in and around Ber ...

(since 2001) * Tansley Lecture,

British Ecological Society The British Ecological Society is a learned society in the field of ecology that was founded in 1913. It is the oldest ecological society in the world. The Society's original objective was "to promote and foster the study of Ecology in its widest ...

, 2009 *

European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...

(ERC) Advanced Grant 2011 * Elected Member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

2013 * Elected Member of the

German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (), in short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founded on 1 January 1652, based on academic models in Italy, it was originally named the ''Academi ...

2013 * Elected 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 * International Award of the Jean-Marie Delwart Foundation 2014 * Elected Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

2016AAAS proudly congratulates the newly elected 2016 Fellows!
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Selected publications

* Schultz, J. C., Baldwin, I. T. (1982): Oak leaf quality declines in response to defoliation by Gypsy moth larvae. Science, 217, 149–151. * Karban, R., Baldwin, I. T. (1997): Induced responses to herbivory. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. * Kessler, A., Baldwin, I. T. (2001): Defensive function of herbivore-induced plant volatile emissions in nature. Science, 291(5511), 2141–2144. * Kessler, A., Halitschke, R., Baldwin, I. T. (2004): Silencing the jasmonate cascade: Induced plant defenses and insect populations. Science, 305(5684), 665–668. * Baldwin, I. T., Halitschke, R., Paschold, A., von Dahl, C. C., Preston, C. A. (2006): Volatile signaling in plant-plant interactions: "Talking trees" in the genomics era. Science, 311(5762), 812–815. * Kessler, D., Gase, K., Baldwin, I. T. (2008): Field experiments with transformed plants reveal the sense of floral scents. Science, 321(5893), 1200–1202. * Kessler, D., Diezel, C., Baldwin, I. T. (2010): Changing pollinators as a means of escaping herbivores. Current Biology, 20, 237–242. * Allmann, S., Baldwin, I. T. (2010): Insects betray themselves in nature to predators by rapid isomerization of green leaf volatiles. Science, 329, 1075–1078. * Weinhold, A., Baldwin I.T. (2011): Trichome-derived O-acyl sugars are a first meal for caterpillars that tags them for predation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108(19), 7855–7859. * Kumar, P., Pandit, S. S., Steppuhn, A., Baldwin, I. T. (2014). A natural history driven, plant mediated RNAi based study reveals CYP6B46’s role in a nicotine-mediated anti-predator herbivore defense. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(4), 1245–1252.

References

External links

Webpage of th

at th
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology

Video

Video on Ian T. Baldwin's research (Latest Thinking)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baldwin, Ian T. 1958 births Living people American ecologists Cornell University alumni Chemical ecologists Members of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina Max Planck Institute directors Dartmouth College alumni