ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — St. Bonaventure University alumnus Dr. Jordan Powers, ’18, will return to campus today, to discuss his doctoral 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. today 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 doctorate 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.

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.