Amy Y. Rossman

Amy Yarnell Rossman (born September 20, 1946, in Spokane, Washington) is an American mycologist and a leading expert in identifying fungi.

Biography Born in Spokane, Amy Rossman moved with her family, when she was six months old, to Portland, Oregon, and considers herself to be a native Oregonian. Rossman graduated with a B.A. in biology from Grinnell College in 1968. She received her Ph.D. in mycology in 1975 from Oregon State University (OSU). Her Ph.D. thesis The genus Ophionectria (Ascomycetes, Hypocreales) was supervised by William C. Denison (1929–2005). As a graduate student she collected fungi in June 1970 in Puerto Rico's El Yunque National Forest and in Dominica and then in January 1971 in Jamaica. From 1980 to 1983 she worked as a mycologist for the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. In 1983 she became a mycologist for the USDA's Agricultural Research Service In the late 1980s the Systematic Botany and Mycology Laboratory (SBML) was formed and she was appointed the SBML's research leader.

In French Guiana on a 1986 expedition sponsored by the Biological Diversity of the Guiana Shield Program, Rossman met the French botanist Christian P. Feuillet. They married in King County, Washington, on 4 September 1988. They have a daughter. Rossman, with coauthor David L. Hawksworth, suggested that about 1.4 million fungal species were undescribed as of 1997.

In 2009 Rossman became the research leader of the Systematic Mycology and Microbiology Laboratory (SMML) in Beltsville, Maryland. She has also been director and curator of the U.S. National Fungus Collections (BPI — USDA Bureau of Plant Industry), which are located at the SMML. The SMML and the U.S. National Fungus Collections are part of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service. She led research on Hypocreales (particularly Calonectria, Nectria and Ophionectria), Diaporthales and other microfungi that cause plant diseases. She made important collections, not only with her husband, but also with Laurence Skog and Gary Joseph Samuels. Together with David F. Farr, she manages a database containing information about the fungal specimens in the U.S. National Fungus Collections. They also maintain a database with data on fungi that have plants as hosts. She has contributed extensively to the Index Fungorum.

Rossman retired in 2014 from her USDA position. In retirement she has lived in Corvallis, Oregon, where she has an office at Oregon State University.

She was elected in 2004 a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

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