Today is a sad one at GARNet HQ as we are losing Ruth Bastow to pastures new (a position with ELIXIR at the Earlham Institute).
Ruth has been involved with GARNet for well over a decade, first as full time coordinator and more recently as the part-time support for Charis Cook and myself.
Over those years Ruth has established GARNet as the respected voice for UK academic plant sciences. She is rightly extremely well regarded by the few who have served on the advisory board, the many who attended the (now) biennial GARNet meeting or the thousands who have used the resources on the GARNet website.
During this time Ruth’s vision has grown broader as she has played significant roles in the establishment of both the UK Plant Science Federation and the Global Plant Council. Without her vision none of these organisations would have survived so it is important that those of us still involved respect her legacy by focusing on maintaining the strength of these organisations.
One of Ruth’s finest contributions to the UK Plant Science community was in the organisation of the International Conference for Arabidopsis Research (ICAR) in Edinburgh in 2009. Hopefully the community can again bring this excellent meeting back to the UK in the coming years…
On a personal level it has been a pleasure to be Ruth’s friend and colleague since we met as starting PhD students at the University of Warwick in 1997(!).
Best of luck to Ruth in her new role. Fortunately for us and the entire global plant science community she will remain as an advisor for both GARNet, the GPC and the Multinational Arabidopsis Steering Committee (MASC).