Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Colorado. She received an NIH post-doctoral fellowship to train as a fungal molecular geneticist at Cornell University. While there, she proposed and began developing the rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae Oryza, as a model for fungal plant pathogens. Valent joined the DuPont Company in 1985 to pursue rice blast research and develop control strategies for this fungus, which remains a global threat to rice production. She rose to DuPont Research Fellow before moving to Kansas State University in 2001. Valent’s rice blast research uses functional genomics and live cell microscopy to understand how the fungus hijacks living rice cells to cause disease. Valent is also a leader in research on wheat blast, caused by the recently emerged wheat-adapted lineage, M. oryzae Triticum (MoT). After spreading in South America since 1985, MoT moved to Bangladesh in 2016 and to Zambia in 2018. Since 2009, Valent has led USDA-NIFA funded interdisciplinary teams of research and extension specialists from diverse institutions in the U.S. and worldwide in order to develop rapid detection and response resources aimed at preventing further disease spread. She attended the 1st International Wheat Blast Workshop (Brazil, 2010) and helped found the International Wheat Blast Consortium for coordinating global research on MoT. Her research also focuses on MoT genome variability and evolutionary trajectory. Valent is a Fellow of both the American Phytopathological Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
