Peter

I studied biology in Germany and was awarded a Dr. rer. nat. in Applied Biology. I worked in anaerobic fermentation (acetone-butanol) and yeast molecular genetics before moving to the USA for postdoctoral studies. I worked for 11 years in the Plant Biology Lab at the Salk Institute in San Diego. I then moved to a faculty position in Plant Science at the University of Edinburgh in 1999.

For the last 30 years, I have been interested in addressing questions of fundamental importance in plant growth control aimed at informing the development of sustainable solutions to enhance plant performance.

My group’s research has focussed on various aspects of plant growth regulation: plant cell cycle and DNA damage, root development, responses to phosphate limitation, and root system development in chickpea. I am strongly interested in food security and using biotechnology and Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning to promote frugal sustainable development. One such project (http://chickpearoots.org) aims to improve chickpea growth and yields by increasing root system depth to access water under dry conditions.

Gina

I was born and raised in Ghana. I had my undergraduate education in Agricultural Science (Crop Science major) at the University of Ghana.

I am currently researching how carbon (sucrose) regulates root system architecture in Arabidopsis thaliana for my PhD thesis.

I am interested in how crop improvement research informs food and nutrition security policies. A burgeoning global population and hunger necessitates increasing crop yield through crop improvement — strengthening the policy-research nexus to increase investments in crop improvement research has never been more crucial.

Fun fact:  I eat banana with peanut butter and I don’t find it weird at all.

Frank

I got my PhD in 2018 at the University of Edinburgh while working in the Doerner lab, studying stress-induced differentiation in Arabidopsis meristems. I also completed and characterised a set of tissue-specific reporter and driver lines for use in Arabidopsis roots.

I then left to work in the lab of Friedrich Kragler at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology in Golm, first as an Erasmus student and then as a postdoctoral researcher. Working on single cell RNA sequencing of Arabidopsis, mechanisms of long-distance mRNA mobility, and tissue culture chimeras.

In 2021, I returned to the University of Edinburgh to rejoin the Doerner lab as a postdoctoral research associate, continuing my work on differentiation in Arabidopsis meristems and some lecturing on the topic of plant development and regeneration.

My main research interest is in cell identity and differentiation, particularly in Arabidopsis roots, focusing on questions such as: what do we mean by ‘cell identity’ in plant cells? How are these identities established and maintained?

When not working at the lab, I am a keen violinist – occasionally playing in classical ensembles and with a jazz trio based in Berlin (now mostly via Zoom!).