Mike Wingfield

Wingfield is an international expert on Plant Health with an h-index of 115 and more than 65 000 citations as of December 2022. He is always included in the Web of Science list of the world's most cited researchers since 2018.

For his contributions and collaboration in the field of forestry, Wingfield was awarded the Christiaan Hendrik Persoon Medal by the Southern African Society for Plant Pathology society in 1999, the University of Pretoria Chancellor's Medal Award in 2008, the Johanna Westerdijk award from the CBS-KNAW Fungal Biodiversity Centre, Netherlands in 2012, the Kwame Nkrumah Award from the African Union in 2013, the University of Minnesota's Distinguished Leadership Award in 2016, John Herschel Medal, the highest accolade from the Royal Society of South Africa, in 2017, the Chinese Government's Friendship Award in 2017, National Science and Technology Forum-South32 Special Annual Theme Award: Plant Health on 30 July 2020, and Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship Award in 2022.

Wingfield is married to Brenda D. Fairbairn, one of his main collaborators, a professor of genetics and Deputy Dean at the University of Pretoria, and an Associate Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences since 2016.

Wingfield was the director of the Centre of Excellence in Tree Health Biotechnology, National Research Foundation, and the President of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) between 2014 and 2019. His collaboration with Chinese academics led to the formation of the CERC/FABI Tree Protection Programme (CFTPP), a joint venture between the FABI and the China Eucalyptus Research Centre (CERC).

Wingfield received an honorary doctorate of science (DSc) from the University of British Columbia in 2012, and the North Carolina State University in 2013.

Wingfield was the founding director of the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI), University of Pretoria, until 2007. FABI was founded in 1998 due to Wingfield's work in 1990 to create the Tree Protection Co-operative Programme. He continued as a Professor at FABI and an advisor to the Executive Board of the University of Pretoria.

Wingfield is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa in 1998, and a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences in 2016.

At the Plant Protection Research Institute, Stellenbosch University, Wingfield started the country's first forest pathology research programme in 1978. After earning his PhD, he continued the program's expansion. In 1990, he was promoted to full professor in the Department of Microbiology and Biochemistry at the University of the Free State after relocating there in 1988. Wingfield was named to the Mondi Paper Co. Ltd. Chair in forest pathology in 1994.

Mike John Wingfield was born on 21 April 1954 in Durban, South Africa. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Botany from the University of Natal in 1976, before completing a Master of Science in plant pathology from the Plant Protection Research Institute, Stellenbosch University, in 1979, graduating with Honours. He earned his doctorate in entomology and plant pathology from the University of Minnesota in 1983. Wingfield also graduated from the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School in 2008.