Pal Maliga is Distinguished Professor of Plant Biology at Rutgers University. He obtained an MS degree at ELTE in Budapest and a PhD at JATE in Szeged, Hungary. Since at Rutgers his research group developed methods for the stable transformation of land plant chloroplast genomes. Chloroplast genome engineering in higher plants has led to an explosion of research concerning the chloroplast genome’s role in photosynthesis, functional analysis of plastid genes by reverse genetics, and mechanisms of plastid gene regulation. His current research interests are tissue specific regulation of plastid transgene expression using PPR RNA binding proteins and biotechnological applications of plastid transformation in Arabidopsis and Brassica. He is the recipient of the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award and was elected Inventor of the Year by The New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame. Dr. Maliga is External Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, received the Lawrence Bogorad Award for Excellence in Plant Biology from ASPB, and was elected Fellow of The American Association for the Advancement of Science.