‘It’s really been a lifelong mission;’ U of I professor speaks on trailblazing career

URBANA, Ill. (WCIA) — A retired University of Illinois professor was recently recognized with a top honor for decades of research into photosynthesis.

The World Food Prize Foundation recognized Stephen Long as a 2025 Top Agri-Food Pioneer. The honor recognizes people who drive change in agriculture and global food security.

“I’ve been working with photosynthesis for 50 years,” Long said. “It’s really been a lifelong mission.”

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He spent his career working on improving the productivity of crops through photosynthesis. He said it hasn’t always been easy.

“Nobody really believed you could make photosynthesis more efficient, because the argument was nature would have already done it,” Long said.

But his research was moving in a different direction. Organizations became interested in his work and wanted to fund it.

“‘How about we put our money where your mouth is, and you show us this can actually be done in a crop,'” Long said. “And so that started the RIPE project.”

RIPE stands for Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency, and it started in 2012. Long was the director from its founding until his retirement earlier this year.

The RIPE project improved crop resilience.

“We were getting more photosynthesis and higher productivity,” Long said.

Long’s research is making an impact globally. He said almost 10% of the world’s population is starving, a number approaching one billion people.

He said he has the answer to help solve the gap between food supply and the world’s growing population.

“If we can up photosynthesis, then we can get more seed, more food,” Long said.

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But it’s what’s in the Energy Farm in Urbana that makes their work feel truly special.

“Right next door to these laboratories, we have six square miles of experimental farm,” Long said. “So when we develop something new in the crop world, we can test it in the real world.”

But it’s not just Long who works in the lab. He has technicians like Noga Adar helping him

“I especially like the hands-on of seeing the plants out in the field,” Adar said. “I feel like you can almost see visually the plants get bigger, and that’s really exciting, knowing that downstream, that is going to help so many people.”

Long said an important aspect of his work is that he has been able to train many scientists in this field of study, and they’ve been able to take what they learned all over the world. People he’s trained are now working in places like Canada, the Netherlands and his native England.

“I have reached the end of my career, but this work is going to become much bigger and better beyond me,” he said.

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