Jean Ristaino

Dr. Ristaino is a William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology at NC State University. She works on the population genetics and biology of the pathogen that caused the Irish famine Phytophthora infestans. Her lab studies the impact of migration, recombination and hybridization on the evolution of Phytophthora. Her research has tracked historic migrations of P. infestans from its ancestral home in the Andes to the US and Europe using historical herbarium collections.  She was part of the team that sequenced the first genome of P. infestans. She is founding director of the Emerging Plant Disease and Global Food Security cluster at NC State. In 2023, she was awarded a Fulbright Award to study Phytophthora infestans and other emerging Phytophthora species in Ireland. She is a Fellow of the American Phytopathological Society (APS), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The Linnean Society and was awarded the International Service Award from APS. She is currently working on a book, The Potato Plague, where she draws from archival letters and herbaria from National Botanic Gardens of Ireland, Kew Gardens, and the Farlow Herbarium. Dr. Ristaino’s work has made an impact on the history of plant pathology, epidemiology, population genomics, food security and science policy (https://ristainolab.cals.ncsu.edu).