Predoctoral Fellow-Genome editing, cutting-edge technology for a sustainable agriculture

I am a new plant mamma. In 2016, I graduated from Bangladesh Agricultural University with a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture. Then I have completed my Master’s degree in Crop Botany from same the same university in 2018. Following that, in 2020, I have joined as a faculty member in the department of Crop Botany at Khulna Agricultural University, Bangladesh. I started working in the lab of Prof. Dr. Frank Van Breusegem at the VIB-Ugent Center for Plant System Biology in Ghent in January 2025 as a predoctoral fellow. For grass peas with a reduced toxin level and a better potential yield, I will concentrate on genome editing. We will attempt to revel out the correlation of ODAP in tolerance to stress in Grass Pea.

Mingjian Zhou obtained his bachelor degree in bioengineering at Jiangsu University of Science and Technology in China. He begins a continuous academic project that involves postgraduate and doctoral study on Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Nanjing agricultural University from September 2020. He focused on the redox-based regulation of hydrogen sulfide and persulfidation and mechanisms of osmotic and drought tolerance in plants. He joined oxidative stress signaling research group of Professor Frank since November 2022 as a joined Ph.D. student and based the topic of “Thiol-Based Protection Mechanisms In Plant Stress Responses: From S-Sulfenylation To Persulfidation”.

I obtained my Bachelor's degree in Plant Biotechnology from the University of Montpellier in 2023. Throughout my studies, I gained expertise in confocal microscopy, R programming, enzyme kinetics, calcium signaling, and the use of WinRhizo software, as well as fieldwork experience in tropical ecosystems. In 2023, I began the Erasmus Mundus Master's program in Tropical Ecology (TROPIMUNDO MSc). As part of my master's thesis, I joined F. Van Breusegem’s research unit to study plant-to-plant communication. My project aims to compare chemical and electrical above-ground communication in tobacco and tomato plants, focusing on both intra- and inter-species interactions.