Interview with Toby Kiers

Toby Kiers is professor of evolutionary biology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. A co-founder of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (Spun), set up to map and safeguard the planet’s mycorrhizal fungal networks, she was awarded the Spinoza Prize in 2023 for her “pioneering” research into the symbiotic relationship between fungi and plants.

Where and when were you born?
New York, 1976.

How has this shaped you?
My family moved up to the Berkshires when I was young. We harvested our own firewood and spent lots of time outdoors. My sister and I were good at foraging for mushrooms as kids. I spent much of my time close to the ground and covered in dirt.

How did you begin studying fungi?
My studies of fungal networks started in the tropical forests of Panama when I was 19, almost 30 years ago. I had thought that the best way to become a scientist was to leave university as an undergraduate and work at a field station. We had no idea what was going on with fungi underground. Everyone was focused on understanding the diversity above ground, but my interest has always been underground – the dark, the mysterious and the hard to decipher. I took a different trajectory from others in academia, but eventually I enrolled back in school for my PhD.

Why should people care about fungal networks?
Mycorrhizal fungi lie at the base of the food webs that support much of life on Earth. Fungi have helped plants adapt over hundreds of millions of years. Now scientists are realising they are crucial to helping ecosystems survive the climate crisis. Mycorrhizal fungi help to regulate Earth’s climate and ecosystems by forming underground networks that draw down carbon and provide essential nutrients to plants. Mycorrhizal fungi are a key entry point for carbon into soil systems. Our work has shown that mycorrhizal networks help draw down 13 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year into the soil, equivalent to about one-third of global energy-related emissions.

What are you currently researching?
My lab studies the evolution of symbioses – partnerships formed between different species. We are interested in why symbiotic partnerships form and what drives them to fall apart. We focus on the partnership between plant roots and mycorrhizal fungi in which we can precisely manipulate resource availability and track how fungal trade strategies change according to changes in the environment. I am in awe of fungal mycelium. For tens of millions of years, fungi served as a sort of root system for plants until plants evolved their own roots. In my research, I try to imagine the world turned upside down.

Why do underground fungi remain poorly understood?
For decades, scientists have been documenting the importance of underground fungal systems for ecosystem health and carbon cycling. But because these systems are invisible, policymakers have failed to incorporate fungi into climate and biodiversity agendas. This is a mistake. We need a Nasa for the underground so we can identify, map and monitor the networks that help sustain life on Earth.

Why was Spun founded?
Spun’s mission is to map, protect and harness the Earth’s underground fungal networks. We founded Spun because academic research wasn’t acting with enough speed or breadth. We were publishing high-impact papers on the importance of fungi, but the research wasn’t leading to action. We needed a vehicle to help drive policy to protect underground ecosystems. Many of the Earth’s underground biodiversity hotspots are unprotected by current conservation schemes.

In 2023 you won the Spinoza Prize, also known as the “Dutch Nobel Prize”. How has that affected your career?
With the award, I can explore high-impact, high-risk questions that would not be possible with regular grants. For example, together with my collaborators in the Biophysics Institute (AMOLF) here in Amsterdam, we are asking: what data streams drive decision-making processes in fungi? Soils are the most complex habitats on Earth. While we know that mycorrhizal fungi live their lives bathed in rich fields of sensory information, it is unknown how they process this information across their complex bodies to determine where, when and how to move resources efficiently. So we are using a combination of ecology, robotics, high-throughput advanced microscopy and machine learning to quantify the structure of mycorrhizal fungal networks across complex nutrient landscapes. These datasets will allow us to decode the information-processing systems and behavioural dialects of these living, sensing networks.

What do you like about academic life? What do you dislike?
I love the optimism of academic life. Often, people are answering huge questions that might take decades to answer; it feels irrational and impossible sometimes, and yet we push on. What I find hard is the disconnect between research and policy. Many of us became scientists to help build a better world, but translating research into action is often slow and incomplete.

What are the most common misconceptions about your work?
There is a misconception that science isn’t creative. Yet creativity is paramount in research. Science is about forging links across ideas and concepts that have never been linked before.

What do you do in your free time?
I’m a mother, an academic with a big lab, and I run a non-profit. It has become hard to find free time. But I don’t resent it. I have one of the most incredible jobs in the world. Working with local collaborators, we go on expeditions to some of the most understudied ecosystems on Earth. One of my greatest joys is bringing my kids on expeditions with us; they are becoming tough and true travellers.

What keeps you up at night?
The urgency of documenting fungal biodiversity before it’s too late. Soils are evolutionary incubators, generating fungi with all kinds of superpowers. But global soils are becoming degraded, and we are losing millions of years of adaptation and innovation.

What is your greatest ambition?
I want to make resource exchange between plant and fungi even more visible – we are still literally in the dark. I want to watch nutrient exchange in real time, simultaneously across a whole network. Can you imagine all the trade deals taking place right now, under our feet? I want to see those interactions, live, in the soil.

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com

CV

1994-99 Bachelor’s degree in plant sciences, Bowdoin College
2000-05 PhD in agricultural ecology and evolution, University of California, Davis
2005-06 Darwin research fellow, biology department, University of Massachusetts Amherst
2006-10 Assistant professor, ecological science department, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
2010-present Professor of evolutionary biology and, from 2014, university research chair, VU Amsterdam
2014-18 Senior research associate, department of zoology, University of Oxford
2019 Ammodo Science Award for fundamental research
2021 Society for the Protection of Underground Networks co-founder
2021 Edward O. Wilson Naturalist Award
2023 NWO Spinoza Prize

Appointments

Jenny Higham has been appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Suffolk, replacing Helen Langton, who is retiring this summer. Currently vice-chancellor of St George’s, University of London, Professor Higham was previously vice-dean for institutional affairs and director of education at Imperial College London’s Faculty of Medicine and the first female chair of the Medical Schools Council. The chair of Suffolk’s board, Ian Ailles, said Professor Higham’s “expertise in leadership and health, combined with her wider contributions to the sector, make her the ideal choice” for the role.

Rebecca Cunningham will be the next president of the University of Minnesota system, moving in July from the University of Michigan, where she is currently vice-president for research and innovation. She replaces Jeff Ettinger, who has served as interim president since the departure of Joan Gabel, now president of the University of Pittsburgh. A faculty member in Michigan’s schools of public health and medicine since 1999, Professor Cunningham previously served as associate vice-president for research and health sciences. She said it was the “thrill of a lifetime” to be appointed Minnesota’s president.

Michele Acuto is joining the University of Bristol as pro vice-chancellor for global engagement. He is currently vice-dean (research) in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne.

The University of the Highlands and Islands has confirmed Vicki Nairn will be its permanent principal, having served in the post on an interim basis since 2022.

Chris Young has been elected master of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. He is currently professor of modern and medieval German studies and head of the School of Arts and Humanities.

Jason Bainbridge has been appointed dean of humanities and communication at the University of Southern Queensland. He moves from the University of Canberra, where he is executive dean of the Faculty of Arts and Design.