My research involves comparative genomics, plant cell biology and plant-microbe interactions. 

I received my PhD from Brian Staskawicz group at University of California, Berkeley where I studied the molecular mechanisms of plant-pathogen interactions. 

My interest in bioinformatics started from wonderful classes taught at Berkeley by inspirational faculty members and students. Under the guidance of Kimmen Sjolander I completed a designated emphasis in Genomics and Computational Biology as a part of my PhD. This motivated me to fully apply my computational skill during my postdoc.

In the Dubcovsky lab, I lead development of functional genomics tools for wheat. Specifically, I am focused on the tetraploid wheat species Triticum turgidum that provides us with pasta and couscous and serves as an important model for basic wheat research. With the help of gene capture technology and modern robotics, I am sequencing 1000 mutant wheat lines from a large TILLING collection that was developed by former graduate student Cristobal Uauy (currently a group leader at John Innes Center) and is maintained in the Dubcovsky lab by Francine Paraiso. On the bioinformatic side, I am leading group efforts to assemble a pipeline for processing exome capture data and identification of mutations in each line. This information is used for developing a reverse genomic database (indispensible contribution from Hans Vasquez-Gross) that will be publicly available to scientists and wheat breeders to identify and request lines with induced alleles of interest.

I am applying these genomic tools to continue my research on plant innate immunity. Specifically, I screened our mutagenized population for induced resistance/susceptibility to wheat pathogens. I am excited to understand the basis of increased resistance in plants and to develop robust and rapid methods of generating new phenotypic diversity in crop species.