Gail Taylor

Gail Taylor is a British plant scientist. She was Distinguished Professor and John B Orr Endowed Professor in Environmental Plant Sciences at University of California, Davis until spring 2024 when she became Dean of Life Sciences at University College London.

Early life and education Taylor was first inspired by plants in her grandmother's garden when she was a child. Her grandmother taught her the food storage methods of pickling, preserving, and using a cellar. Her two favourite plants are lettuce and watercress.

Career From 1986 to 1990, Taylor was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Forestry Commission, England. In 2017, Taylor moved to the US to be the department chair and a professor of Plant Sciences at University of California, Davis. This award made her one of five women in the Plant Science Department to hold endowed chair positions as of 2024, which the department called a "historic achievement." She has contributed a large volume of work to the plant sciences industry and helped build departments and research centers along the way.

Research Taylor's research has focused on leafy green crops and bioenergy. She has researched molecular breeding for lettuce and watercress, improving shelf life of lettuce with physiology and genetics, the genetics of the leafy green and microbe relationship, and produced the first genomic information on watercress. She has also researched the development and delivery of trees to be used for biofuel, and the molecular adaptations plants have made to the increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Achievements Taylor Taylor became the director and a trustee of the Vitacress Conservation Trust in 2007. She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2014.

Personal life Taylor is a mother to two children.