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ACT Women Honoured by the Academy
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Susanne von Caemmerer was born and grew up in Freiburg, West Germany. She had always been interested in mathematics, and proceeded to study it in the university. However, at that time in
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Susanne von Caemmerer measuring leaf gas exchange in a greenhouse |
Germany, one could only combine math studies either with physics or economics, and neither option attracted Susanne. Fortunately for Australia, she had a relative here, who encouraged her to come over for one year for a family visit, just to see the country and have a break. As often happens, she never looked back, attracted by the more relaxed university life here, which allowed her to combine the pure mathematics major with philosophy and botany as sub-majors. She also enjoyed the smaller study groups in ANU.
After finishing her Honours degree, Susanne was employed by the Research School of Biological Sciences (RSBS) as a lab technician to work in a project studying stomatal physiology (stomata being the “holes” in plant leaves that allow air to diffuse). Soon she was offered a PhD position by Drs Ian Cowan and Graham Farquhar in RSBS, who had just started working on the mathematical modelling of photosynthesis, a process of fixation of atmospheric CO
2 into sugars by plant leaves. With her background, Susanne was very well qualified to join the research group, and went on to do ground-breaking work during her PhD. She developed equations that for the first time were able to make links between what was known about the leaf biochemistry and the observed kinetics of gas exchange.
After a postdoc at the Carnegie Institute in Stanford, USA, Susanne returned to RSBS to continue work as a postdoc and was later supported by a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship. She is currently a Professor in Molecular Plant Physiology in RSBS.
Susanne’s work throughout her career has focused on photosynthesis. She has developed models of carbon acquisition in both C3 and C4 plants. Her descriptions of the process have grown more complex, combining aspects such as diffusion of CO
2 and water molecules between the inside of the leaf and atmosphere, biochemical regulation of the enzymes responsible for carbon fixation within plant cells, and the absorption of light by the pigments in leaf cells. The models of these biological processes on a leaf level provide the basis for predicting the responses of canopies, fields and indeed the whole biosphere to environmental changes such as the increase in the atmospheric carbon dioxide. In fact, these equations are used very widely – they can be found embedded in the software of gas-exchange machinery, or in computer simulations of heat and water exchange between vegetation and atmosphere. In her work she often utilizes transgenic plants that have alterations in different components of the photosynthetic machinery. These plants with various internal perturbations are especially suited for quantitative analysis of photosynthesis.
Last May, Susanne was inducted as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences. In her new role she appreciates becoming a member of a large community of scientists, and getting exposed to different disciplines. Recently she was also elected to the German Academy of Science
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