New staff - status August 2020
See below who have started on the project during the summer months, and read about their background and what they will work on in the INTERACT project.
Research Assistant Kitzia Yashvelt Molina Zamudio
I have a background as a biotechnologist at Reiter Affiliated Companies, leading the development of organic-biocontrol products made by bacteria isolated from unperturbed environments to control pest and fungi diseases in berries. For the INTERACT project, I will isolate bacteria from wheat and select a core microbiome to work with in further experiments.
Place of employment: University of Copenhagen, Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Microbial Ecology and Biotechnology
Postdoc Josefina Patricia (Pathy) Fernandez Moreno
Pathy has an international PhD in Biotechnology by the Valencian Polytechnique University (Spain) and Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), and she did a first postdoc in Synthetic Biology and Plant Hormones at NC State University (US). Her background includes gene silencing, metabolomics, genomics and transcriptomics for phenylpropanoids and cuticular lipids in tomato fruit and other crop surfaces (including wheat leaves) and the synthesis and assembly of phytobricks using multiplexing technologies in the study of hormone crosstalk in Arabidopsis. Her role in this project will be to study the metabolite fingerprint of wheat root exudates under different treatments (including the effect of vernalization, artificial soils, biotic and abiotic stresses and light/dark cycles) and try to determine if there is a minimal metabolite composition associated with a core microbiome.
Place of employment: North Caroline State University, Department of Plant & Microbial Biology