悼念Philippa Borrill‬教授

2026-04-10 17:00:43

Philippa Borrill‬教授

IWGSC news

It is with deep sadness that we share the news of the passing of Professor Philippa Borrill (John Innes Centre, UK). The wheat community has lost a brilliant scientist, a great collaborator and, above all, a wonderful human being. She will be greatly missed.

Philippa worked on wheat since the beginning of her career. She joined the IWGSC in 2012 and became a member of the Coordinating Committee in 2018. During her BBSRC Fellowship at the John Innes Centre in 2016, she worked alongside Ricardo Ramírez-González and Cristobal Uauy to lead the transcriptome analysis for the IWGSC RefSeq v1.0 project, assembling nearly all publicly available RNA-seq data for wheat into a landmark gene expression atlas published concurrently with the RefSeq v1.0 paper in Science in 2018. This resource [https://www.wheat-expression.com/] has since been used by thousands of researchers worldwide and has played a critical role in advancing wheat research and plant breeding. In recognition of this extraordinary contribution, Philippa, together with Ricardo and Cristobal, were awarded the IWGSC Leadership Award in 2018.

We will remember Philippa for her brilliant mind, her intellectual curiosity, and her genuine commitment to making science more open, accessible, and collaborative. Her passing is a tremendous loss, not only for the wheat community, but for science as a whole.

The IWGSC extends its deepest condolences to Philippa’s family, her colleagues at the John Innes Centre, and all who knew her.