Dr Jeff Ellis is renowned for his work in plant molecular biology and, in particular, for research into disease resistant genes. In 1994 Ellis and his colleagues cloned the first plant rust resistance gene from flax and he has made major advances in the understanding of the rust plant interactions and the relationship between the avirulence genes from the flax rust and the resistance genes from flax. Earlier Ellis played an important role in understanding the Agrobacterial transformation of plants and using the early methods of transformation to study the maize Adh1 promoter and octopine synthase promoter enhancer.