(MORGAN HILL, CA) — Nirmal Nair, CEO and founder of Sempera Organics, has announced that Sempera’s chief mycologist, Dennis Desjardin PhD, will receive a prestigious award from his peers.

On August 2, 2023 at its annual meeting, the Mycological Society of America will present Dr. Dennis E. Desjardin with the Distinguished Mycologist Award. This is the highest award issued by the professional mycological organization to honor a long career of outstanding research, teaching, and professional and public service in the field of mycology. The Mycological Society of America’s annual meeting will take place in Flagstaff, AZ from July 29 to August 2, 2023.

Dr. Desjardin served for 31 years as Professor in the Department of Biology, and Director and Curator of the H.D. Thiers Herbarium at San Francisco State University.

His research focuses on the distribution, taxonomy and evolution of mushroom-forming fungi. Supported by eight National Science Foundation grants, Dr. Desjardin has conducted field studies in the Hawaiian Islands, Micronesia, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, West Africa, Brazil and the US. He has published over 150 refereed scientific papers and described over 300 new species of mushrooms representing most major body forms (agarics, boletes, polypores, bird’s nest fungi, earthstars, stinkhorns, coral, cyphelloid, sequestrate and secotioid fungi).

He has co-authored two popular field guides, Mushrooms of Hawaii (Ten Speed Press) and California Mushrooms (Timber Press). Dr. Desjardin has become recognized as an authority on bioluminescent fungi.

Dr. Desjardin was the first recipient of SF State’s Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Professional Achievement (2007), and he is an elected Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences (1995) and the Mycological Society of America (2005). In 1998 he was awarded MSA’s C.J. Alexopoulos Prize and the W.H. Weston Award for Excellence in Teaching.

He commented, “I am deeply honored to have been chosen for this lifetime achievement award in recognition of my career in mycology. I am most grateful to my mentors whose shoulders I stand on, and to the many students I have trained and with whom I collaborated.”

Nair said, “We are honored to work with Dr. Desjardin, as his vast knowledge of and passion about mushrooms can heal the world aligns directly with our philosophy and core mission.”