David Mendoza-Cozatl, associate professor in the MU Division of Plant Science and Technology, was named recipient of a 2024 MU International Engagement Award by MU International Programs. The MU International Engagement Awards recognize the outstanding work carried out by faculty, staff and students to internationalize the University of Missouri. The awards recognize meaningful and sustained commitments to international work, whether directly on campus or brought back to the campus from an engagement abroad. In order to demonstrate their effect upon internationalizing the campus, nominees must clearly indicate the concrete impact made upon scholarship, students or MU programs by their international work.

Mendoza-Cozatl is a world-leading researcher in understanding how plants acquire essential metal nutrients from the soil, transport the metals safely throughout the plant, detoxify non-biological metals and enhance food security and human health through biofortification. Mendoza-Cozatl’s research is internationally recognized and highly regarded. In 2019, he was named a Presidential Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Science and an Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.

Mendoza-Cozatl played an important role in expanding the University of Missouri’s longstanding strategic partnership with UWC to include the College of Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources and the Interdisciplinary Plant Group. He has developed successful collaborations, notably with Professor Marshall Keyster at UWC, supporting student and postdoc exchanges in both directions and publishing extensively with his collaborators. Mendoza-Cozatl’s research contributes to international food security and economic development, benefiting food-producers around the world, including avocado growers in the U.S., crop genome engineers in Cambodia and cacao growers in South and Central America. His work has attracted important external funding, including the first USDA Foreign Agricultural Service Emerging Markets Program grant awarded to a U.S. university.