Draft:Sorina Claudia Popescu

“Sorina Popescu” (March 4, 1969 – December 19, 2022), was a plant scientist and biochemistry professor at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Science and Mississippi State University. She made significant contributions in plant biochemistry, developing the first protein microarray for plant systems biology studies and uncovering molecular aspects of plant signaling and immunity and plant-pathogen interactions. She discovered large-scale kinase signaling networks and plant signaling pathways involved in calcium and redox signaling. She discovered that redox-sensitive gene oscillations under the control of proteolytic activities are necessary for systemic acquired resistance establishment.

She received her undergraduate education at the University of Bucharest, where she majored in biology and earned her doctorate in plant molecular biology from Rutgers University in 2003. . She completed her postdoctoral studies at Yale University, where she led a plant protein microarrays NSF project. She worked as an Assistant Scientist and Principal Investigator in plant signaling and immunity at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Science from 2008 to 2015. From 2016 to 2022 she was an associate professor of biochemistry at Mississippi State University where she led a plant immunity lab.

Early life and education
Sorina was born on March 4th, 1969 in Brașov, Romania, to Elisabeta and Lazăr Cristea, who migrated in the ‘60 from central Transylvania and Danube shores to work in the town’s newly created auto industry. She was a student-athlete and excelled in school from an early age, working as a pharmacist before enrolling in university studies. She earned her MS degree in Biology from the University of Bucharest, where she later joined the faculty in the Plant Biology department. She started her Ph.D. work there, studying oomycetes unique to the Danube Delta. She emigrated to the United States in 1996 and attended graduate school at Rutgers University in New Jersey on a Waksman Institute of Microbiology fellowship and a Biotechnology Center grant, earning her doctorate in Plant Molecular Biology in 2003.

Academic posts
After completing her graduate studies, Sorina started a postdoctoral position at Yale University, working with Michael Snyder and S. Dinesh-Kumar on developing a new plant systems biology high throughput method. She was later promoted to Research Scientist and led a three-year flagship NSF program on plant protein microarrays. She published widely cited studies on calcium signaling and MAPK signaling networks in plants using the protein microarray chips she developed.

In the Fall of 2008 Sorina was appointed to a research faculty position at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Science at Cornell University. While at BTI, she co-led two NSF projects on plant signaling networks and plant disease resistance, while expanding her plant systems biology research focus.

After seven years at Cornell, Sorina moved to Mississippi State University where she taught biochemistry and further developed her research lab. She taught General Biochemistry and created Cellular Signaling and Plant Biochemistry and Molecular Biology graduate courses. At MSU, she led two nationally competitive NSF projects in plant proteomics and redox signaling and started new research directions in plant-pathogen interaction and microbial communities. In her final years, she worked toward creating a Center for Biomedical Research Excellence in Systems and Synthetic Biology at Mississippi State University.

Research Contributions
Dr. Popescu's research significantly advanced the field of plant biology and biochemistry. She discovered that thimet oligopetidases are salicylic acid-binding modulators of plant immune responses , identified new pathways associated with tomato resistance to Pseudomonas syringae , and investigated the role of integrin-like kinases in plant stress .

She created a nationally competitive and internationally recognized program that led to paradigm changing discoveries in plant immunity. Following her postdoctoral work on developing protein microarrays for a plant model system, research in her lab advanced knowledge on signaling networks, molecular host-pathogen communication, and systems-level analysis of plant immunity . In an NSF “Rules of Life” investigation she established that plant systemic acquired resistance, triggered in the distal tissue by the local pathogen infection, requires a complex oscillatory dynamics controlled by thimet oligopetidases, a family of conserved redox-sensitive plant enzymes.

At Mississippi State University she started new research focused on exploring translational aspects of plant immunity and finding ways to improve crop health. In her last project, she surveyed root microbiomes of healthy and diseased plants and identified bacteria that can inhibit pathogen growth and prevent disease development in crops

She was a frequent NSF and USDA panelist, grant reviewer for national and international agencies, editor for the research journals Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, MPMI, and Current Plant Biology, reviewer for numerous journals, including Nature Plants, PNAS, and Plant Cell, and organizer and invited speaker at dozens of plant research conferences and workshops.

Legacy
Sorina Popescu died on December 19, 2022. In recognition of her work, Mississippi State University has established the Sorina Popescu Memorial Annual Scholarship Award to support promising students in the fields of plant biology and biochemistry.