James Berry

Advisor

Profile
James Berry is a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University at Buffalo.  He also advises and supports the development and testing from a microbiological standpoint of StarcoGro's Agriclutre Lighting and Camera System. Prior to that he was a Research Associate Professor at the Waksman Institute at Rutgers University and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Utah Department of Cell, Viral, and Molecular Biology.  He received his BS degree in Biology at Pacific University in Oregon and PhD in the Department of Genetics at Iowa State University.  He has been a visiting scientist at University at Cambridge UK and CSIRO Division of Plant Industry in Australia.  His primary research field is Plant Molecular Biology, with a focus on photosynthesis genes and improvement of plant photosynthetic productivity using transgenic plant technology.  He has collaborated on research projects involving plant bioremediation of agricultural chemicals in soil, mechanisms of plant resistance to virus infection, chloroplast genes associated with pathogen resistance, and photosynthetic carbon capture by algae for commercial biomass production.  Dr. Berry’s teaching at UB includes undergraduate and graduate lecture and lab courses in molecular genetics and plant biology.  He has received a Teaching Innovation Award for developing and publishing a CRISPR gene editing laboratory exercise for undergraduate students that is currently used in Universities in the US and abroad.  Community outreach includes advising middle school students on a project that grew seed potatoes in the international space station, running a summer research internship program in his laboratory for STEM students from a local high school, and serving as a member of the North Tonawanda Climate Smart Taskforce to develop community strategies for adapting to challenges associate with climate change.