I’m a Ph.D. student in the Plant Biology Graduate Group at UC Davis working in the Dubcovsky lab. My research focuses on the genetics of wheat gluten and its impact on processing quality and celiac disease. Right now, we’re excited to be developing wheat varieties with reduced immunogenicity and exploring synthetic gluten proteins. I am grateful to the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research Rockey Fellowship and the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences for supporting my work. I’m passionate about interdisciplinary science and science communication, and I’m looking forward to weaving these interests into my graduate studies and future career.

I am a Ph.D. student in the Plant Biology Graduate Group at UC Davis in the Dubcovsky lab. My research is focused on characterizing the genes involved in the regulation of spike meristem development in wheat. This research will be used to advance breeding for greater yield on a per-spike basis. My work is funded in part by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Following my Ph.D., I intend to pursue a career in academia focused on research in plant development.

I was born and raised in Ethiopia from a farming family. Although they are not educated, my family strongly believes in the value of education and thus, they helped me pursue a successful scientific career. Coming from a country that depends on agriculture, I have always been very enthusiastic about the potential of new genetic techniques to improve crops yield and quality. After completing my undergraduate university training, I joined The Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research as a junior tef breeder. I studied my postgraduate program in plant Biotechnology at Wageningen University, in the Netherlands. There I attended several theoretical and practical courses on molecular plant biotechnology.

Later I became interested in plant development and architecture. To pursue my interest, I went to Germany for a PhD at the research group led by Professor Thorsten Schnurbusch at Martin Luther University in Halle. His research group at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), integrates genetics and genomics approaches. My doctoral research project focused on the genetics of ‘Miracle Wheat’ a tetraploid natural mutant that has branched spikes and increased number of spikelets. I have co-authored the study that identified the first gene contributing to this unusual spike phenotype in wheat (Poursarebani et al. 2015).

To further pursue my career, I joined the laboratory of Prof. Jorge Dubcovsky at the University of California, Davis for my postdoctoral research in wheat spike development, architecture, and yield.