SEB Conference Prague 2024

Dr Hatem Rouached

Michigan State University; USA

H. Rouached gained scientific and managerial skills during his PhD (University of Montpellier, France, 2002-2005), his Postdoc (University of Lausanne, Switzerland, 2005-2009), and as Senior Scientist in Crop Design (BASF Company, Ghent, Belgium, 2010-2012). In 2012, he was recruited at INRA, France. He was then visiting faculty at Carnegie Institution for Science (Stanford, USA, 2016-2018). Concurrently, he was an adjunct Professor at Chiang Mai University- Thailand. In 2020, he joined Michigan State University, the Plant Resilience Institute, the Department of Plant, Soil, and Microbial Sciences, and the Plant Resilience Institute, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.  

Dr Benoit Lacombe

Research Director , CNRS – Montpellier - France

Dr. Lacome investigates the molecular mechanisms underlying plant development regulated by hormone-nutrient interactions, particularly focusing on nitrate and urea. The project aims to identify how plants perceive their mineral environment and adapt their development to nutritional constraints. Dr. Lacome's research uses complementary approaches including biophysics, molecular biology, physiology, and systems biology to unravel the complex network of interactions between nutrients and hormones in plants.

Dr Hatem Rouached

Michigan State University; USA

H. Rouached gained scientific and managerial skills during his PhD (University of Montpellier, France, 2002-2005), his Postdoc (University of Lausanne, Switzerland, 2005-2009), and as Senior Scientist in Crop Design (BASF Company, Ghent, Belgium, 2010-2012). In 2012, he was recruited at INRA, France. He was then visiting faculty at Carnegie Institution for Science (Stanford, USA, 2016-2018). Concurrently, he was an adjunct Professor at Chiang Mai University- Thailand. In 2020, he joined Michigan State University, the Plant Resilience Institute, the Department of Plant, Soil, and Microbial Sciences, and the Plant Resilience Institute, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.  

Dr Gabriel Krouk

Research Director , CNRS- France

No bio provided

Dr Karen A Sanguinet

Associate Professor , Washington State University

Dr. Karen Sanguinet received her degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of California–Berkeley in Genetics and Horticulture (B.S.) and Plant Biology (Ph.D.), respectively. She was then a postdoctoral researcher with the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst. She then secured an Assistant Professor post at Iwate University, Japan, before her hire in 2014 as an Assistant Professor of Crop Physiology in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at WSU. Dr. Sanguinet received promotion and tenure in 2021. Dr. Sanguinet’s research focuses on factors that modulate root growth and development using developmental, genetic and genomics approaches in both model and crop plants. She also studies how climate as well as anthropogenic and management factors affect root growth in diverse environments.

Dr Laurent Nussaume

CEA-CNRS-Université Aix Marseille France

L. Nussaume's scientific career is characterized by a strong diversity in terms of the topics covered. After a first experience in research on the light regulation modulating Nitrate assimilation (PhD at INRA Versailles under M Caboche supervision), he worked at the John Innes Center on the development of genetic tools in Arabidopsis with Dr JDG Jones.

Back in France at CEA Cadarache, he performed the genetic characterization of a pathway devoted to photosystems named chloroplast signal recognition particle (cpSRP). Interestingly it derived from the SRP pathway that has highlighted the notion of protein addressing in eukaryotes (G. Bloebel, Nobel Prize 1999). However, cpSRP turn out to have unique features with the absence of RNA component replaced by a distinct plant protein named CHAOS/cpSRP43. Then with his group he elucidated the physiological role of the different components of plant cpSRP (including cpFTSY and ALBINO3). He pioneered, thanks to T-DNA mutants created by INRA Versailles, screen identifying many root mutants such as: plethora, tor, high affinity phosphate transporter, … Then, he focused on phosphate (Pi) nutrition in plants contributing to the characterization of Pi transporters as well as to the analysis of morphological and biological modifications related to the homeostasis of this element during the last 19 years.

Dr Ajay K Pandey

National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute, Mohali, India

In our lab, we employ functional genomics techniques to improve iron content and bioavailability in hexaploid wheat. We combine analytical and transcriptomics methods to investigate the regulatory mechanism governing iron deficiency tolerance, as well as strategies to enhance iron mobilization and storage in cereal grains. 

Dr Jitender Giri

DST-Swarnajayanti Fellow Scientist V, NIPGR, New Delhi India

Dr. Jiri Giteder is a distinguished scientist specializing in the molecular regulation of low phosphate adaptations in plants, focusing on rice and chickpea. With a career spanning prestigious institutions globally, including the University of Nottingham, UK, and Penn State University, USA, he currently serves as Staff Scientist III at the National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR) since 2014. Dr. Giteder has received numerous awards for his contributions to the field, such as the SwarnaJayanti Fellowship Award and the NASI-SCOPUS Young Scientist Award. His research employs genomics tools to enhance resource utilization in plants under phosphate scarcity, advancing agricultural sustainability.

Dr Justyna Olas

Justyna J. Olas is a junior Group Leader at the Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops (IGZ) e.V. in Großbeeren, Germany. Previously, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Potsdam. She was awarded a PhD for her studies on plant developmental responses to limited nutrient supply, conducted in the group of Prof. Mark Stitt and Dr. Vanessa Wahl at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Golm, Germany. Justyna leads an active research program investigating how plants adapt their growth and development to abiotic stresses, with a focus on the shoot apical meristem. In particular, she is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying thermal memory in plants.

Prof Rodrigo Reis

University of Bern, Institute of Plant Sciences

Rodrigo Reis is an Associate Professor at the University of Bern, where his recently formed group studies post-transcriptional regulation in plant development and interaction with the environment. He received his BSc. degree in Biochemistry from the University of Vicosa and a PhD with his work on plant miRNA biogenesis from the University of Sydney. He was a postdoctoral researcher at University of Lausanne under Yves Poirier.

Dr Sotirios Fragkostefanakis

Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

Sotirios is a group leader in the working group of Molecular and Cell Biology of Plants, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. His research focuses on understanding how plants respond to high temperatures that cause heat stress using genetic, molecular biology and physiological approaches. He aims to describe the effects of different heat stress regimes on plant metabolism, identify the key regulators of heat stress response and characterize how they control important thermotolerance mechanisms. He is currently the Action Chair of RECROP COST (www.recrop-cost.com) leading the efforts to understand the basis of the sensitivity of plant reproduction to extreme climates and find solutions to make crops more resilient and ensure food security.

Monika Chodasiewicz

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology,

Monika Chodasiewicz completed her PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Plant Physiology in Potsdam Germany in 2014. Her PhD research contributed significantly to the discovery of the oxygen sensing mechanism in plants, which was recognized by Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe in his 2019 Nobel lecture. She continued at Max Planck as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Lothar Willmitzer and Dr. Aleksandra Skirycz, where she studied small molecule-protein interactions using novel methods in biochemistry. Professor Chodasiewicz developed her research topic during this time, and formed her research group at the KAUST Center for Desert Agriculture in 2020 to continue it. The research interest of Stress Granule Lab is to study stress specific complexes of small molecule, proteins and mRNA in Plants. With the use of biochemistry, molecular biology and cell biology, Stress Granule group study membrane-less foci formed in plant cells under different stress conditions.

Phillip Wigge

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, ,

Phil Wigge grew up on an island in Spain where he developed an interest in natural history. After his Masters in Biochemistry at Oxford and PhD studying budding yeast in Cambridge, Phil switched to plant biology, doing a postdoc with Detlef Weigel at the Salk Institute. Since starting his own group in 2004, Phil has been seeking to understand how plants sense temperature. Phil is currently a Professor at the University of Potsdam, and Head of the Programme Area Plant Adaptation at the Leibniz Institute in Großbeeren, near Berlin.

Dr Justyna Olas

Justyna J. Olas is a junior Group Leader at the Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops (IGZ) e.V. in Großbeeren, Germany. Previously, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Potsdam. She was awarded a PhD for her studies on plant developmental responses to limited nutrient supply, conducted in the group of Prof. Mark Stitt and Dr. Vanessa Wahl at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Golm, Germany. Justyna leads an active research program investigating how plants adapt their growth and development to abiotic stresses, with a focus on the shoot apical meristem. In particular, she is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying thermal memory in plants.

Dr. Robyn Emmerson

Robyn is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham in the Catoni group. Her research focuses on the transgenerational impacts of DNA hypomethylation in plants, using the model Arabidopsis thaliana. Her research interests span from epigenetic plasticity and DNA methylation to plant-environment interactions.

Dr Marco Catoni

No bio provided

Filipe Borges

IJPB-INRAE

Filipe Borges is a plant biologist and group leader at the Institut Jean-Pierre Bourgin (IJPB) of the INRAE center of Versailles (France). His research focus on elucidating fundamental aspects of plant epigenetics and reproduction, but with a strong potential for building new avenues between epimutagenesis and crop improvement.

Associate Prof. Frank Johannes

Technical University of Munich

Frank Johannes conducts research in the area of plant epigenomics. His group combines experimental and computational approaches to elucidate epigenetic mechanisms of genome regulation and inheritance in plants. Frank obtained his PhD at Pennsylvania State University’s (USA) focusing on statistical genetics. He spent the last year of his PhD as a Marie Curie Fellow at the French Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA). He continued this work as a postdoc at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and later at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He stayed in Groningen as an Assistant Professor before being appointed Rudolf Mößbauer Professor at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). In 2022, he was appointed Associate Professor.

Dr. Sara Lopez-Gomollon

University of Kent, UK,

I am a plant RNA biologist, with a special interest in small RNAs. I am a group leader at the University of Kent, studying how small RNAs can affect gene expression and genome stability in different contexts such as hybridisation, viral response or grafting. 

"small RNAs as drivers of genetic and genomic  plasticity"

My talk will be about how plants can overcome stress by changing gene expression and how small RNAs are contributors to genome plasticity. I will show my latest results on tomato plants, studying how small RNAs change gene expression and transcriptional and posttranscriptional level, in response to the presence of "foreign" nucleic acids in two contexts: hybridisation and grafting

Dr Nuria De Diego Sanchez

No bio provided

Dr Lukas Spichal

Group leader of the phenotyping group at Palacky, University in Olomouc

No bio provided

Dr Sagar Sanjay Arya

Biomedical Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.,

Sagar Arya is a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Deakin University (Australia), specializing in the field of bioengineering. Sagar has a diverse skill set in the area of biochemistry and material science, with expertise in studying pathogenic bacteria, plant cell culture, bioactive compounds, and nanomaterials. Currently, Sagar is engaged in researching bacteria-based solutions, drawing upon his knowledge to explore innovative ways to address challenges in the area of drug testing using bacterial cell membrane mimetics, pathogenic bacteria, and Biofilm-on-chip models.

Dr Firat Güder

Principal Investigator and Chief Engineer GÜDER RESEARCH GROUP, Imperial College London, London, UK.

Dr Fırat Güder is a reader (US equivalent professor) in Intelligent Interfaces in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London. Prior to his appointment at Imperial, he was a research fellow in the group of Prof. George M. Whitesides at Harvard University in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical  Biology. He has a PhD in Microsytems Engineering (summa cum laude) from the University of Freiburg, Germany, and a BSc in Computer Engineering (First Division) from the University of New Brunswick (UNB), Canada.

Over the years, his achievements have been recognized through numerous awards and recognitions including (but not limited to) Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry,   One of Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World by Junior Chamber International, President’s Award for Excellence in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, ACS Sensors “Rising Star in Sensing”,    President’s Medal for Excellence in Research for Outstanding Early Career Researcher,  Tom West Analytical Fellowship, German Research Foundation International Fellowship, KU Leuven International Scholarship, Furtwangen University MTM Scholarship, UNB Class of 1939 Scholarship, N. Myles Brown Scholarship, Governor Thomas Carleton Scholarship, UNB Alumni Achievement Award.

Firat and his research group work in the intersection of material science, electronics, computing, biology and chemistry to develop intelligent interfaces to connect complex chemical and biological systems with computers. The overall aim of his research is to develop impactful technologies to address pressing, global challenges related to animal and human health, food systems and environment.

In addition to his peer-reviewed papers, he is an inventor of multiple (licensed) patents and cofounded four startups based on his own research including Unhindr Ltd, Spyras Ltd (acquired), BlakBear Ltd and AniML Ltd. His research at Imperial is sponsored by the Wellcome Trust, EPSRC, BBSRC, GE Healthcare, The Royal Society, Analytical Chemistry Trust Fund, Innovate UK, US Army, European Institute of Innovation & Technology, Gates Foundation and others.

Dr. Verónica G. Doblas

Instituto de Hortofruticultura Subtropical y Mediterránea (IHSM-UMA-CSIC)

Dr. Verónica G. Doblas received her PhD degree at the University of Málaga (Spain) in 2012. Right after, she joined the group of Dr. Niko Geldner at UNIL (Switzerland) for her postdoc, and in 2017, she moved to the laboratory of Dr. Herman Höfte at the IJPB, INRAE (France). In Sept 2020, Verónica joined IHSM-UMA-CSIC in Málaga (Spain) funded with the competitive Ramón y Cajal program from Spanish ministry. Her research interest is to unravel the biological relevance of small signaling peptides and their receptor kinases controlling cell wall changes during tomato fruit development. In 2022, she received The Plant Journal Fellowship for young group leaders in the plant field. From December 2023, Verónica is Tenured Scientist.

Assistant Prof. Elwira Smakowska-Luzan

Wageningen University & Research Laboratory of Biochemistry

Elwira Smakowska-Luzan is an Assistant Professor at the Laboratory of Biochemistry, Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Her research group studies how plants adjust their growth and defend themselves against different stresses in their surrounding environment. Supported by VIDI, NWO Talent Programme, Elwira’s team uses complementary genetic, biochemical, proteomics, and systems biology approaches to determine how plants interact with their environments using sophisticated extracellular sensors, Cysteine-rich Proteins (CRPs). Before joining Wageningen University, she did her postdoctoral training at the Gregor Mendel Institute (GMI) in Vienna, Austria, working on plant receptor kinases and their interaction networks. Elwira did her PhD at the Biotechnology Department, Wroclaw University, Poland, where she was primarily interested in plant mitochondria biology and oxidative stress.

Prof. Thorsten Hamann

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

I received my PhD in developmental for research on auxin-mediated patterning processes during Arabidopsis thaliana embryogenesis at the Eberhard-Karls University in Tübingen. After a brief spell with Bayer Crop Science, I began my postdoctoral research period at the Carnegie Department for Plant Biology in Stanford. There, I started investigating the mode of action of the plant cell wall integrity maintenance mechanism. The mechanism monitors the functional integrity of plant cell walls and initiates adaptive changes in cell wall composition and cellular metabolism in response to integrity impairment, caused by developmental processes or (a)biotic stress. After moving back to Europe, and a brief spell at the MPI for Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam, I continued pursuing this topic with my research group initially at Imperial College London in 2006. Since 2012 is my research group based at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.  Hamannlab.org

Prof. Eugenia Russinova

Ghent University

Jenny Russinova is a group leader at the Center for Plant Systems Biology, VIB and a Professor at Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. She completed her BSc and MSc from Sofia University, Sofia, Bulgaria, her PhD from De Montfort University, Leicester, UK and did postdoctoral training at Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands. Her work examining the brassinosteroid signaling pathway has provided key information on the subcellular localization and trafficking of brassinosteroid receptor complex and how downstream factors such as GSK3-like kinases crosstalk with other signaling pathways. Recently she has elucidated the mechanisms of transport and distribution of brassinosteroid hormones. Dr. Russinova is a Reviewing Editor for Plant Cell (2015-), an EMBO member (2018-) and an international member of the National Academy of Sciences (2022-).

Associate Prof. Julia Santiago

University of Lausanne

Julia Santiago studied Agriculture engineering/Biotechnology at the Technical University of Valencia, Spain. She did her PhD in plant biology and biochemistry/structural biology at the IBMCP and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Grenoble. She then moved to the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the Max Planck Society in Tuebingen, Germany, and then to Geneva, Switzerland, with support from FEBS and EMBO, to do her postdoc in the team of Michael Hothorn working on membrane signaling receptors. In September 2016 she started her own group as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Plant Molecular Biology at the University of Lausanne. She was awarded with the Early Career Award by the American Society of Plant Biology, a Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC) and the Programme for Academic Promotion of La Fondation Philanthropique Famille Sandoz in 2017. She was awarded with the EMBO Young Investigator Programe and got get tenure as an Associate Professor at the University in Lausanne in 2021.

Prof. Martin Stegmann

Ulm University

Martin Stegmann studied Biology at the University of Würzburg (Germany). In his diploma thesis, he focussed on infection-induced changes of the Arabidopsis sphingolipid profile. After completion of his Diploma thesis, he conducted his doctoral thesis in the group of Marco Trujillo (both at the University of Würzburg and later the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry in Halle, Saale, Germany). Here, he shifted his interest towards the molecular characterization of pattern-triggered immunity in Arabidopsis. He finished his doctoral studies in 2013 and joined the group of Cyril Zipfel at the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, UK, to continue his work on pattern-triggered immunity. During his PostDoc time, he developed a strong interest in the regulation of pattern-triggered immunity by endogenous peptides. In 2018, he started his own group at the Technical University of Munich in the lab of Prof. Ralph Hückelhoven (Chair of Phytopathology). He studies how specific growth-regulatory peptides coordinate immunity with growth and other stress responses. In 2024, he accepted a call to the University of Ulm as professor for molecular botany.

Dr. Leonardo Caproni

Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies

Assistant Professor in Plant Genetics and Genomics in the Center of Plant Sciences at Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies and the University of Pisa. Leonardo worked on adaptation genomics and conducted research on collections of agrobiodiversity in several African countries, mostly in Ethiopia and Mozambique. Leonardo’s interests span from studying the effects of climate change on the distribution of agrobiodiversity to the genetic improvement of crops based on phenomics and genomic data. To this end, his expertise encompasses forward genetics approaches including genome-wide association studies and QTL mapping using multi-parent mapping populations.

Dr. John Ferguson

University of Essex

Lecturer in Plant-Environment interactions in the School of Life Sciences at The University of Essex. John’s interests span the juncture of plant ecophysiology and genetics, where he is interested in developing and employing phenomics approaches to characterise variation in key traits that define the response of plants to climate changes. Increasingly, his research is concerned with illuminating the genetic basis of photo-physiological variation in key crops, such as maize and rice.

Prof. José Luis Araus Ortega

University of Barcelona

Professor of Plant Physiology, University of Barcelona. Research stages at the University of Georgia (USA), the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA, Syria), the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA, UAE), the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI , Panama), International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT, Mexico), the Institute of Plant Physiology (INFIVE, Argentina), University of Talca (UTalca, Chile), the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT, Texcoco, Mexico, 2009, 2010, 2011). Professional stages as Seconded National Expert in the EU Directorate General of Research (Brussels, 2000-2003) and as Principal Scientist in the CIMMYT Global Maize Program (Mexico, 2006-2009) and later as CIMMYT Consultant (2009- 2011). His experience in coordinating research evaluation is extensive and includes European, National and Regional Spanish agencies. Associate Editor: The Crop Journal and Field Crop Research and Board Member of Crop and Environment. PI of several international projects and contracts and co-author of 300 publications in SCI and SSCI journals, with h-index of 92 (Google Scholar). Research in crop phenotyping, photosynthesis and mechanisms of productivity and adaptation of plants to stress conditions.

Dr. Aude Coupel-Ledru

INRAE

Aude Coupel-Ledru is a researcher at INRAE in the Laboratory for Plant Ecophysiology under Environmental Stress (LEPSE, Montpellier). Her research is centred on the integrated study of the interactions and feedbacks that rule plants responses to environmental stimuli brought about by climate change. She is particularly interested in the mechanisms that control water use by plants and their interaction with those that govern growth and production, and combines ecophysiology, genetics and modelling to explore these trade-offs. A central pillar to her research is the development and deployment of high-throughput phenotyping tools, in order to characterize thousands of plants in controlled conditions and in the field and to deploy an integrative approach across scales (gene-plant-canopy). She has built her multidisciplinary research by working in France, Australia, Italy and the UK on different species, with a special interest for perennial fruit crops.

Dr. Marc Christian Heuermann

Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK)

Marc received his PhD in biology from the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany. He is a research associate at IPK Gatersleben and investigates the influence of fluctuating light and environmental dynamics on plants. His research aims to study genotype-environment interactions under simulated field-like conditions in the IPK PhenoSphere and, in the future, under simulated weather conditions as predicted in future climate scenarios. He is currently working on the EU Horizon project CAPITALISE using high-throughput phenotyping systems and the IPK PhenoSphere to assess the potential of a large MAGIC maize panel to improve photosynthetic performance.

Dr. Hilde Nelissen

University of Ghent

Hilde Nelissen is group leader at the Center for Plant Systems Biology at the VIB and Ghent University.  Her research career has focused on the central biological question: How do growth processes determine final plant organ size? Initially, she approached this using molecular biology studying Arabidopsis leaf development. As her interest shifted towards applied research, Hilde redirected her focus to maize. What started as translational research to bring knowledge from Arabidopsis to crops and from the lab to the field, gradually developed into a research line with the goal to decipher the instructor networks that govern leaf size, organ growth and ultimately yield in maize. Because plant organ size control is an important yield component that is also severely impacted by climate change, the teams ultimate goal is to deepen our understanding of the growth regulatory networks to achieve climate resilient crops. To address these biological questions, the team implements a range of molecular and phenotyping technologies, including multiplex genome editing, single cell and spatial transcriptomics.

Prof. Stanislav Kopriva

University of Cologne

Professor for Plant Biochemistry at the University of Cologne. The research aim is to understand how plants integrate the uptake and utilization of key mineral nutrients with their needs, demand, and changes in environment and what is the role of micro-organisms in plant nutrition. The research focuses on three areas: (1) molecular mechanisms of sulfur homeostasis and its integration in general plant metabolism; (2) alterations in mineral nutrition between C3 and C4 plants; and (3) metabolic signals in plant microbe interactions and their contribution to plant nutrition.

Prof. Nicolaus von Wirén

Leibniz Institute for Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK Gatersleben)

Managing Director of the Leibniz Institute for Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK Gatersleben), Head of Dept. for Physiology and Cell Biology and Professor for Plant Physiology and Cell Biology at the University of Halle. Major research interests are nutrient sensing, metal and ammonium transport processes across plant membranes, nutrient-phytohormone interactions, impact of nutrients on root system architecture, and nutrient efficiency mechanisms in crops.

Professor Katherine Denby

University of York, UK

Professor Katherine Denby is a member of the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (cnap.org.uk) in the Biology Department at the University of York. The research in her group focuses on plant disease resistance, novel bio-control strategies and crop improvement for disease resistance, yield and quality traits through integrating genomics, transcriptomics, network analysis and quantitative genetics. Katherine’s work is focused on leafy vegetables, using large-scale data and new plant breeding techniques to meet the needs of sustainable agriculture in the UK and Global South. She is Editor in Chief of The Plant Journal and a previous Chair of the Plant Section in SEB. 

Dr. Franziska Fichtner

Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

Franziska Fichtner studied the function of the sugar-signalling metabolite trehalose 6-phosphate in regulating shoot branching in Arabidopsis and pea for her PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam-Golm. After graduation she continued working on this theme as a postdoctoral fellow, before moving to Christine Beveridge’s lab at the University of Queensland, where she investigated links between sugar and phytohormone signalling in shoot and root branching. She is now a junior group leader associated with the Cluster of Excellence on Plant Sciences (CEPLAS) at Heinrich-Heine University, Düsseldorf, where she is focussing on how trehalose 6-phosphate and other sugar signalling pathways shape plant architecture.

Johannes Kromdijk

University of Cambridge

Johannes Kromdijk is a fellow at Pembroke college Cambridge, and an associate professor at the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Growing up in an area of The Netherlands with an abundance of glasshouses, Johannes became interested in plants at an early age. Since 2018, he leads a research group studying the physiology of photosynthesis and its interactions with environmental drivers such as light, water, temperature and CO2 with the ultimate aim to improve crop productivity and water use efficiency. Their work involves bioengineering of model and crop species, comparative analyses of congeneric species with different photosynthetic pathways, high throughput screening of field-grown diversity and mapping populations and in depth physiological experimentation. Johannes was awarded the SEB President’s medal in 2020 (Plant section) and holds a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to study the genetic determinants of chilling-induced photoinhibition in maize. He also has a continued interest in the interplay between photoprotection and photosynthetic energy use, especially under dynamic conditions under which he has previously demonstrated a significant impact of photoprotective alterations on plant performance.

Prof. Laura Rossini

University of Milan

Laura Rossini received a PhD in Genetics at University of Milan (Italy). After working as a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford (UK), she moved back to University of Milan, where she is currently full professor of crop genetics and head of the Master programme in Crops and Plant Sciences. For the past twenty-four years she and her group have applied genetics and genomics approaches to investigate the mechanisms controlling plant morphology and development with a major focus on barley. Since 2008, she also engaged in research on fruit trees, participating in the International Peach Genome Initiative and the development of genomics-based approaches for genetic dissection and improvement of fruit quality and agronomic traits. ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6509-9177

Professor Nils Stein

Head of Department , Genebank and Research Group leader at Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Gatersleben

Nils Stein is Head of the Department Genebank and Research Group leader at Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Gatersleben, and Professor of Crop Plant Genetics at Martin-Luther-University, Halle-Wittenberg. His research focuses on structural and comparative genome analysis of the small grain cereals barley, wheat and rye – with a leading role in genome sequencing of all three species. This work has facilitated genotyping of large and diverse germplasm collections (‘genebank genomics’) of barley, wheat and other species of the Gatersleben Genebank, underpinning the systematic exploration of crop pangenomes to unlock crop genome diversity at species scale.

Guido van den Ackerveken

Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Guido Van den Ackerveken (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) is professor and chair of Translational Plant Biology. His track record is in the field of molecular plant-microbe interactions focusing on understanding the plant immune system and mechanisms of disease susceptibility. His niche is in the translation of fundamental insights into application in crop breeding. He is active in public-private partnerships to connect academic research to companies in the green sector in the Netherlands. Guido is currently leading two larger national programs: (1) LettuceKnow, that is exploring knowledge on plant resilience and architecture obtained in a diversity panel of 500 Lactuca lines and establishing lettuce as a model organism for the Asteraceae, one of the largest plant families, and (2) CropXR, an institute aimed at developing methodologies to understand plant resilience and deploy mechanistic modeling and AI approaches to breed for climate-adapted and robust crops.