SIPS Director

Jocelyn Rose

jr286 [at] cornell.edu (jr286[at]cornell[dot]edu) 

  • Advances SIPS priorities within the college, university, and external organizations.
  • Strengthens alumni and donor engagement.
  • Guides strategic planning and faculty hiring.
joss rose

Overall vision

Overall Vision

As Director of SIPS, Joss Rose leads efforts to foster local and global collaboration across units, campuses, and the broader SIPS community. 

Key responsibilities include:

  • Advancing SIPS priorities within the college, university, and external organizations.
  • Strengthening alumni and donor engagement.
  • Guiding strategic faculty hiring.
  • Implementing the SIPS strategic plan to shape a bold, long-term vision for the school while setting and tracking progress toward ambitious goals.

The activities of SIPS center on four core Grand Challenges to focus the school's research, teaching, and outreach efforts in the face of a changing climate and growing pressure on natural and agricultural ecosystems. 

  • Sustainable crop production and food security: Improving crop yields and nutrition, leveraging genetic diversity, reducing crop losses to pathogens and weeds, and developing reduced-input cropping systems and digital agriculture technologies.
  • Ecosystem health: Integrating climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, managing soil health and nutrient cycles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and building resilient landscapes for climate-vulnerable populations.
  • Biodiversity: Understanding fundamental plant processes from cells to ecosystems, harnessing knowledge of plant-microbe interactions, and leveraging data to model and bioengineer plants and their microbes for novel properties.
  • Green Cities: Enhancing food access and ecosystem services in high-population areas, develop and sustain green spaces in urban environments (e.g., parks, community gardens, green infrastructure), and promote urban agriculture practices. 

SIPS addresses these interconnected challenges by conducting research across various disciplines, including plant biology, horticulture, plant breeding and genetics, plant pathology, and soil and crop sciences. 

About the SIPS director

Dr. Jocelyn Rose is the Director of the School of Integrative Plant Science (SIPS) at Cornell University and a Professor in the Plant Biology Section. An internationally recognized plant biologist, his research has provided fundamental insights into the structure, function, and development of plant cell walls and structural polymers—work with broad implications for agriculture, food production, and sustainable biomaterials.

Before becoming SIPS Director, Joss served as Chair of the Plant Biology Section, and previously as Director of the Cornell Institute of Biotechnology and  Director of the New York State Center for Life Science Enterprise.

His contributions to science have been recognized through numerous honors, including election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture’s Honor Award, and the CALS Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Research. He has also been repeatedly named a Highly Cited Researcher in Plant and Animal Science, ranking among the top 1% of scientists in his field.

Joss earned his B.Sc. in Biology from the University of Manchester and his Ph.D. in Plant Biology from the University of California, Davis.

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