Leon Van Eck

Leon van Eck is an Assistant Professor in the Biology Department, and the curator of the greenhouse plant collection at Augsburg University. He grew up in South Africa, and the astonishing beauty and diversity of its flora inspired him to a lifelong passion for plants. Leon was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue a Ph.D., which he completed at Colorado State University, specializing in plant genetics. A passionate teacher, he wants students to appreciate the beauty in nature as much as the science. Leon’s research at Augsburg focuses on characterizing the mechanisms that wild, undomesticated relatives of cereals evolved to fend off attack by insect pests. Students in his lab are introduced to a molecular approach to food security, working to identify genes that might help crops cope with biotic stress on an increasingly hot and crowded planet. Leon lives in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis, with his husband and too many houseplants.