Martina Leso awarded the Royal Society of Sciences’ Benzelius Prize
Martina Leso, postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Plant Biology at SLU, has been awarded the Royal Society of Sciences' Benzelius Prize 2026 in the Physical and Mathematical Sciences class.
The Benzelius Prizes were established in the early 1980s to recognise and reward the achievements of promising early-career researchers. They are named after Erik Benzelius, founder of the Society.
The motivation for awarding the prize to Martina reads: “for outstanding studies of the molecular mechanisms underlying plant grafting and parasitic plants”
Martinas' work has helped reveal how plants connect with each other and exchange - or in the case of parasitic plants, steal - resources. Her research has shown that these connections, whether between grafted plants or between parasitic plants and their hosts, depend on a complex interplay between nutrient availability, hormonal signaling and cell wall modifications.
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