Julian Hibberd

Julian Michael Hibberd FRS (born December 1969)^[1] is a Professor of Photosynthesis at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.^[2][6][7][8]

Julian Hibberd FRS
Born	December 1969 (age 55)[1]
Alma mater	Bangor University (BSc, PhD)
Scientific career
Fields	Plant Sciences[2]
Institutions	University of Cambridge University of Sheffield[3]
Thesis	Effects of elevated CO2 on biotrophic pathogens: powdery mildew of barley (1994)
Doctoral advisor	John Farrar Bob Whitbread
Other academic advisors	Julie Scholes Paul Quick John C Gray Malcolm Press[4][5]
Website	www.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/research/julianhibberd

Education

Hibberd was educated at Bangor University where he was awarded an undergraduate degree in 1991 followed by a PhD in 1994.^[4][9][6] His PhD thesis investigated the effects of elevated carbon dioxide (CO₂) on powdery mildew in barley and was supervised by John Farrar and Bob Whitbread.^[10]

Research and career

Following his PhD, Hibberd completed three years of postdoctoral research at the University of Sheffield with Paul Quick,^[11] Malcolm Press^[3] and Julie Scholes,^[12] investigating interactions between parasitic plants and their hosts.^[13][14] He moved to Cambridge to work with John C. Gray in 1997,^[4][15][16] 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.^{[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]} Hibberd's research has been funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation^[25][26] the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC),^[27] the FP7 program of the European Union,^[4] and the European Research Council (ERC).

Hibberd served as an associate editor of the scientific journal Plant Physiology from 2012 to 2022.^[28]

Awards and honours

In 2000 Hibberd was awarded a BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship to investigate the role of photosynthesis in veins of C3 plants.^[7][13][29] 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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[25] 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".

Hibberd was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2025.^[30][31]