Julian Hibberd


Julian Michael Hibberd is a Professor of Photosynthesis at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Education

Hibberd was educated at University of Wales, Bangor where he was awarded his first degree in 1991 followed by a PhD in 1994. His PhD thesis investigated the effects of elevated carbon dioxide on powdery mildew in barley and was supervised by John Farrar and Bob Whitbread.

Research and career

Following his PhD, Hibberd completed three years of postdoctoral research at the University of Sheffield with Paul Quick, Malcolm Press and Julie Scholes, investigating interactions between parasitic plants and their hosts. He moved to Cambridge to work with John C. Gray in 1997, and started his own group in 2000.
The Hibberd laboratory investigates the efficiency of the C₄ photosynthetic pathway, with the aim of understanding its repeated evolution and also contributing to improving crop productivity. Hibberd's research has been funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the FP7 program of the European Union, and the European Research Council.
Hibberd is an Associate Editor of the scientific journal Plant Physiology.

Awards and honours

In 2008 Hibberd was named by the journal Nature as one of "Five crop researchers who could change the world" for his research that is attempting to replace C₃ carbon fixation in rice with C₄ carbon fixation. This would greatly increase the efficiency of photosynthesis and create a rice cultivar which could "have 50% more yield" which "would impact billions of people".
In 2000 Julian was awarded a BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship to investigate the role of photosynthesis in veins of C3 plants. In 2005 he was awarded a President's medal by the Society for Experimental Biology, and in 2007 The Melvin Calvin Award by the International Society of Photosynthesis Research.