Ma makes his way to Penn State

Penn State has named Hong Ma (pictured), professor of biology and distinguished research professor of plant molecular biology, as the associate dean for research and innovation at the Eberly College of Science.
Ma will supervise the college’s research administration office, responsible for grant and funding opportunities, and the office for innovation, which plays a hand in securing intellectual property and connecting college innovations to industry contacts.
Penn State expects Ma’s appointment to help nurture research from across Emberly College of Science and bring opportunities to integrate innovation with training and diversity programs at both undergraduate and graduate levels.
Following an eight-year spell as an investigator for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Ma first joined Penn State in 1998. He left the university in 2008 to become dean of Fudan University’s School of Life Sciences before returning to Penn State in 2017.
Ma is a fellow of nonprofit research organization American Association for the Advancement of Science and a senior fellow of federal healthcare research agency National Institutes of Health.
His Penn State research focuses on the use of genetics, cellular biology, genomics and bioinformatics to study the reproductive biology of plants at a molecular level.
Ma was honoured with a Penn State faculty scholar medal in life and health sciences in 2005. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Temple University in 1983 and a doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology five years later, before joining California Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral researcher.