ISCE-APACE 2025

Caroline Müller

Bielefeld University, Germany

Caroline Müller has been full professor for Chemical Ecology at Bielefeld University, Germany, since 2007. She received her PhD from Free University of Berlin in 1999. She then spent a year as postdoc at Boyce Thompson Institute Ithaca, USA, and three years at Leiden University, The Netherlands. In 2004, she became independent group leader for Chemical Ecology at Würzburg University, Germany. Caroline is fascinated by the manifold functions of natural products in plant-insect interactions and their chemodiversity. She has elucidated central aspects of how natural products direct insects to their host plants and initiate feeding, how insects detoxify these compounds and use them for their own defense against predators, and which role they play in invasions. She also contributed significantly to revealing how various aspects of global change, including pollutants such as heavy metals, microplastics and pesticides as well as climate change factors, affect plants and their interaction partners.

Max Suckling

Fellow, Plant & Food Research, New Zealand

Max Suckling FRSNZ is a pioneer in the discovery and development of pheromones and other semiochemicals for insect pest management and biosecurity. His novel application of pheromones in managing insecticide resistance in the 1980s was followed by the development and wide adoption of multi-species mating disruption, as part of efforts to avoid insecticides on export apples and other fruit. His pheromone-based approaches to invasive insect suppression and eradication have included large surveillance trapping arrays, theory and practice of mass trapping, lure and kill, the sterile insect technique, and behavioral disruption of fire and Argentine ants. He has collaborated extensively with NZ, Australian, and US agencies, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna on socially-acceptable solutions for a wide range of invasive species including fruit flies and stink bugs. He retired in early 2021 as Science Group Leader Biosecurity and Professor in Biological Sciences (University of Auckland) but remains a Fellow of Macquarie University, Fon. Edmund Mach, and Plant and Food Research.

Nathan Derstine

Pennsylvania State University, USA

Nathan Derstine is a USDA-NIFA Postdoctoral Fellow at Pennsylvania State University. He obtained his MSc from Simon Fraser University, Canada, working with Dr. Gerhard Gries, and his PhD (2023) from Pennsylvania State University with Dr. Etya Amsalem. His PhD work examined the role and biosynthesis of reproductive signals in bumble bees, in addition to the diversity and chemical evolution of those signals across bees. A USDA-NIFA Predoctoral Fellowship supported further research into how pesticide exposure affects mating and sexual signaling in bumble bees. Outside academia he has worked under Dr. Eric Jang and Dr. Matthew Siderhurst for USDA-ARS (Hilo, Hawaii) and under Dr. Miriam Cooperband USDA-APHIS (Buzzards Bay, MA) to identify attractive semiochemicals for invasive pests such as little fire ant (Wasmannia auropunctata) and spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula). Nathan’s current research examines the behavioral manipulation of a conopid fly which induces grave-digging behavior in its bumble bee host. Nathan will join the University of Richmond as a Visiting Assistant Professor in August 2025.

Jürgen Gross

Julius Kühn-Institut, Germany and University of Geisenheim, Germany

Jürgen Gross received his PhD from Free University of Berlin (FUB) in 2001. After some years as postdoc at Berlin, Dossenheim and Giessen, he started in 2008 his position as head of working group “Applied Chemical Ecology” at Julius Kühn-Institut for Plant Protection in Fruit Crops and Viticulture, Dossenheim, Germany. In 2024 he was appointed as director of the institute and Professor for Biotechnical Plant Protection at University of Geisenheim, Germany. Since 2012, he is the convenor of the Working Group „Pheromones and other Semiochemicals in Integrated production” of the International Organisation for Biological Control (IOBC/WPRS), and since 2017, he is the president of the German Society for General and Applied Entomology (DGaaE). Jürgen is investigating the chemically mediated communication between cultivated plants, phytopathogens, and herbivorous animals. The results are used for targeted manipulations in the context of sustainable biotechnical control of pest organisms. He is developing novel applications for pest monitoring, mass trapping, mating disruption, and push-and-pull strategies using semiochemicals and semiophysicals.

Bill Hansson

Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology, Jena, Germany

Bill Hansson pursued his studies in biology at Lund University, earning a Bachelor of Science in the field in 1982. He completed his PhD in Ecology with a successful thesis defense in 1988. From 1989 to 1990, Hansson was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona before returning to Lund in 1990 as a junior professor. By 1992, he had advanced to an Associate Professor position and between 2000 and 2001, he held a full professorship in Chemical Ecology at Lund University. In 2001, he took on the role of Professor and Head of the Chemical Ecology department at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Alnarp, Sweden, a position he held until 2006 when he became Director and a Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany. He also served as Vice President of the Max Planck Society from 2006 to 2020. Hansson holds honorary professorships at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, and Nanjing Agricultural University and Hainan University in China. After retiring from the Max Planck Society in 2025, he became a senior professor at SLU and a senior advisor at the Agricultural Genomics Institute in Shenzhen, China. His research is centered on the neuroethological aspects of interactions between insects and their interaction with plants, with a primary focus on insect olfaction. His main research questions explore how insects detect semiochemical signals (odors) and how these signals are processed in the insect brain, the evolution of these detection and processing mechanisms, and the role of olfaction in guiding insect behavior.

Almuth Hammerbacher

University of Pretoria, South Africa

Almuth Hammerbacher graduated with a PhD in biochemistry in 2011 from the Friedrich Schiller University in Germany. She is currently an associate professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, in the Department of Zoology and Entomology and a researcher in the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute. She and her team study the chemical interactions between trees, insects and fungi in forest ecosystems. She also identifies phenomic traits in commercial plantation forest tree species, such as Eucalyptus and pines, that can be used as markers to identify trees that are resistant to insects and pathogens. Her research uses specialized techniques, including laboratory, greenhouse and field bioassays, analytical chemistry, molecular techniques, hyperspectral sensing and AI tools.

Junji Takabayashi

Kyoto University (Center for Ecological Research), Japan

Junji Takabayashi, a Japanese chemical ecologist, has spent more than three decades researching plant–insect interactions. He is recognized for elucidating the ecological and mechanistic bases of herbivory-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs). His important demonstrations that plants infested by herbivores emit a specific blend of HIPVs that attract carnivorous natural enemies of herbivores and trigger defense responses in neighboring plants have redefined tritrophic interactions and opened new strategies in pest management.Junji seamlessly integrates basic science and application in his work. For example, his team identified a specific blend of diamondback moth (DBM) larvae-HIPVs that attracts the DBM larvae's specialist parasitoids, Cotesia vestalis. Placing dispensers containing the synthetic HIPVs in commercial brassica greenhouses suppressed the occurrence of DBM. He was also among the first to demonstrate plant-to-plant communication. His research on plant-to-plant communication ranges from elucidating fundamental mechanisms to implementing field-level applications. In applied studies, exposing soybean, maize and rice plants to volatiles released by mechanically damaged weeds reduced pest damage and increased crop yields, highlighting the method’s potential for sustainable agriculture.Beyond the laboratory, he has built international scientific networks. As the principal investigator of a JSPS Core-to-Core program, he connected Japanese universities with partners in the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. This collaboration fostered extensive researcher exchange and joint research. He served as chair of the ISCE-APACE Joint Meeting held in Kyoto in 2017, and subsequently became president of the Asia-Pacific Association of Chemical Ecologists, promoting efforts to expand exchanges among chemical ecologists in the region.Junji is the author of over two hundred peer-reviewed publications and has delivered invited lectures in many countries. He has also served on the editorial boards of leading journals in entomology and plant science. He is equally committed to mentorship and has supervised more than thirty graduate students and Post Docs who now hold influential positions in academia, government, and industry. His approach, based on an integrated mechanism, aims to promote chemical ecology research in harmony with safe and secure agriculture. He also holds multiple patents related to plant-insect interactions mediated by volatile substances and participates in national-level advisory board.

Plenary Speakers