St. Bonaventure University alumnus Dr. Jordan Powers, ’18, will return to campus Thursday, Oct. 10, to discuss his Ph.D. thesis research on how plants defend themselves against bacterial pathogens.

The program, “Next-generation mapping of the salicylic acid signaling hub and transcriptional cascade,” will be held at 4:30 p.m. Oct. 10 in the auditorium of Walsh Science Center. His visit is sponsored by the university’s Visiting Scholars Committee and Department of Biology and is free and open to the public.

Powers received his Ph.D. from Duke University in 2024, where he studied in Dr. Xinnian Dong’s research lab and identified the partners and targets of the key immune regulator NPR1. He is now a postdoctoral researcher in the same lab.

Powers earned a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from SBU, where conducted research in Dr. Xiao-Ning Zhang’s lab to understand the role SR45 and alternative splicing have in plant immunity.

The 2018 Bonaventure Ideal Man, Powers was a member of the men’s swimming and diving team. He also was one of the founding members of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) student chapter on campus following the Biochemistry program’s initial accreditation.

“Jordan is an inspirational example of how a student can thrive in the Biochemistry program at SBU while being a Division 1 student-athlete,” Zhang said. “He was very productive as an undergraduate researcher. When he was conducting research in my lab, Jordan won the Outstanding Undergraduate Oral Presentation Award at the regional Rustbelt RNA Meeting in 2016 and received an undergraduate travel award to attend the Plant Biology Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 2017.”

Powers is also a co-author of two peer-reviewed research papers that Zhang’s lab published and his research was supported by the John L. & Léone E. Worden Memorial Award. 

In addition to research, Powers was passionate in serving the rural community while he was at St. Bonaventure. He and other founding members of the ASBMB student chapter took hands-on STEM activities to fairs in K-12 schools to share the love of science with young students and their families.

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About the University: The nation’s first Franciscan university, St. Bonaventure University is a community committed to transforming the lives of our students inside and outside the classroom, inspiring in them a lifelong commitment to service and citizenship. Out of 167 regional universities in the North, St. Bonaventure was ranked #6 for value and #14 for innovation by U.S. News and World Report (2024).