Maya Bar: ARO, Volcani Institute, Israel (BMC Biology)
Dr Maya Bar has a dual background in plant development and immunity. Located at the Agricultural Research Organization- Volcani Institute in Israel, the Bar lab is comprised of a diverse group of individuals conducting collaborative basic and applied research of the plant immune system. We investigate immunity priming, development-defense trade-offs, and chemical and organismal biocontrol of plant disease. Main concepts in the lab include manipulation of immunity priming to generate plants with constitutively "ON" immune responses, resulting in broad-spectrum resistance, and research into development-defense tradeoffs with the hope of "hacking" these processes to prevent yield loss.
Helen Fones: University of Exeter, UK (BMC Biology)
Helen Fones is a UKRI future leader's fellow based at the University of Exeter. Her research programme looks at epiphytic colonisation of leaf surfaces during early infection of wheat by the fungal pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici, using a mix of microscopy, genomics, and metabolomics. She gained her DPhil in plant pathology from the University of Oxford in 2011. She then obtained a POINT fellowship at the Freie Universität, Berlin, before taking up a postdoctoral research position in Exeter in 2013. She began her FLF in 2020. Helen is passionate about improving research culture and has keen interests in career development for early career researchers and in equality, diversity and inclusivity in research.
Sam Periyannan: University of Southern Queensland, Australia (BMC Biology)
Sambasivam (Sam) Periyannan is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern Queensland and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, Australia. After completing his PhD at the University of Sydney, Sam started his scientific career as a postdoctoral fellow at CSIRO, where he eventually became an independent scientist and led the Crop Resistance Genes team. Sam’s research interest is centered on molecular genetics and plant pathology, focusing on understanding the interaction between cereal crops and its pathogens. Between 2017-2019, Sam took a secondment position at the Australian National University to complete the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award project, where he extended his research further to understand the molecular interaction between Myrtaceae tree species and the myrtle rust pathogen.
Olubukola Oluranti Babalola: North-West University, South Africa (BMC Microbiology)
Olubukola is an NRF-rated scientist, an MBA graduate, a Research Director and a Principal Investigator at NWU. After a PhD with a Fellowship from IITA and OWSD, she had postdoctoral experiences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. She has worked on rhizosphere metagenomics for almost 20 years. She serves on many editorial boards and as an international advisor to several others. Her recent Springer book is “Food Security and Safety: Africa’s Perspective.” Olubukola is #1 in Africa for Soil Science and Plant Nutrition.
Manoj Kumar Solanki: University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland (BMC Microbiology)
Dr Manoj Kumar Solanki is currently working as a scientist in the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. He obtained his PhD in Microbiology from Rani Durgawati University, India, and was awarded a visiting scientist fellowship from the Guangxi Academy of Agriculture Sciences, China, and at Volcani Center, Agricultural Research Organization, Israel. Dr Solanki has been engaged in various research activities on plants–microbes interaction, soil microbiology, plant disease management, enzymology, and published many research articles in various international journals.
Alok K Srivastava: National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms, India (BMC Microbiology)
Dr Alok Kumar Srivastava is a dedicated scientist in the area of molecular microbiology, presently working as Director at ICAR-National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms, India. He has made an outstanding and pioneering contribution in the area of Molecular Plant Pathology, contributed to structural, functional and comparative genomics of agriculturally important microorganisms, pathogens, development of molecular diagnostic tools and biological control of important diseases. Dr Srivastava has successfully completed several externally funded research projects from DST, DBT and other agencies of the Indian Government.
Manoj Kr Tripathi: Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, India (BMC Microbiology)
Dr Manoj Kumar Tripathi is currently working as Principal Scientist at ICAR-Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Bhopal, India. His major areas of professional interest include medicinal compounds, functional food, nutraceutical, probiotic fermented food, food safety and food quality. Dr Tripathi has been recipient of several prestigious awards and honours, and he is also working as an editor-In-chief, editor and member of editorial board of several national and international journals.
Andreia Cristina Figueiredo: Science Faculty of Lisbon University, Portugal (BMC Plant Biology)
Andreia Figueiredo is an associate professor at the Science Faculty of Lisbon University and the head of the Grapevine Pathogen Systems Lab. Since her PhD on Cellular and Molecular Biology, she dedicated her research to the study of plant-pathogen interactions focusing on grapevine, through a systems biology approach by employing multi OMIC technologies, functional genomics, and biotechnology-based approaches. Her research group’s main aim is to unveil disease regulatory networks in grapevine but also to understand plant-pathogen and plant-microorganisms communication, aiming at improving crop resistance and achieve sustainable production through biotechnology-based approaches.
Ravi Gupta: Kookmin University, South Korea (BMC Plant Biology)
Dr Ravi Gupta obtained his Ph.D. in Plant Physiology and Biochemistry from the University of Delhi, India. After gaining his Ph.D., he spent more than five years in South Korea working as a postdoctoral fellow and Research Professor at Pusan National University, Busan, Korea. Dr Gupta is a recipient of several prestigious national and international awards such as Ramalingaswami re-entry fellowship, Ramanujan fellowship, and ITS fellowship from Government of India and Korea Research/Brain-pool Fellowship from Government of South Korea. His current objectives include unravelling the molecular mechanism of plant-pathogen interaction using rice-Magnaporthe oryzae and rice-Xanthomonas oryzae pathosystems.
Aiping Song: Nanjing Agricultural University, China (BMC Plant Biology)
Aiping Song is an Associate Professor in Ornamental Horticulture in College of Horticulture, Nanjing Agricultural University, China. He has investigated many aspects of ornamental plant genomics and molecular biology, emphasizing the role of stress response, development, and plant-pathogen interaction. He has developed a variety of bioinformatics tools to promote molecular biology research, especially in protein-protein interactions. With the help of multi omics technologies, he explored the core regulatory modules that regulate plant traits, aiming at improving crops by using genetic editing tools.
