Helen M. and Paul J. Janos Endowed Chair of Mycorrhiza Ecology

In December 2024, David P. Janos created the first endowed chair in the College of Agricultural Sciences’ Department of Botany and Plant Pathology. The chair is named after his parents, Helen and Paul Janos, who always supported his studies. Chair holders will investigate mycorrhizas – the beneficial relationship between plants and root-inhabiting fungi – in the natural world, seeking potential practical applications in forestry and agriculture. 

Dave spent 38 years as a biology professor at the University of Miami, where his passion for hands-on teaching manifested in an annual course leading students on a 53-kilometer hike from cloud forest to rainforest in Costa Rica. His half century of mycorrhizal investigations convinced him that these symbioses – which reduce plants’ need for chemicals, enhance nutrient and water uptake, increase plant resilience to environmental stress and improve soils – could be the key to agricultural and forestry sustainability in a drastically changing world. “Mycorrhizas are the glue that hold ecosystems together. If you waved a magic wand and erased mycorrhizal fungi, you would not have forests, and food production would be greatly diminished.”