My research career has focused on the central biological question: How do growth processes determine final plant organ size? Initially, I approached this using molecular biology studying Arabidopsis leaf development. As my interest shifted towards applied research, I redirected my focus to maize. What started as translational research to bring knowledge from Arabidopsis to crops and from the lab to the field, gradually developed into a research line with the goal to decipher the instructor networks that govern leaf size, organ growth and ultimately yield in maize. Because plant organ size control is an important yield component that is also severely impacted by climate change, our ultimate goal is to deepen our understanding of the growth-regulatory networks to enhance our success rate to achieve climate-resilient crops.
 
As lecturer of ‘Plant Research Technologies’ and ‘Plant Yield’ within the Advanced Master in Plant Biotechnology, I get the opportunity to enthuse Master students about the possibilities of plant biotechnology to change agriculture.
 
My team and I set out to create an inclusive atmosphere that stimulates critical thinking, creativity, team work, personal development, job satisfaction, personal fulfillment, mutual respect, scientific transparency and research ethics.
 
 
 
 

Timothy Villers is a postdoctoral researcher in the Nelissen lab at the VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology. He obtained his Master of Science in Biology at Ghent University in 2020, followed by a PhD in Biochemistry and Biotechnology at VIB-UGent, where he studied the cytochrome P450 enzyme CYP78A and its role in regulating plant growth. He is currently the lead researcher of the ASTROMY project, funded by BELSPO and the European Space Agency (ESA). The project aims to study plant growth in microgravity using the Maize Greenhouse Cube, a growth platform for maize seedlings aboard the International Space Station. By applying single-nuclei RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics to returned samples, he aims to identify genes that can be targeted for crop improvement for bioregenerative life support systems in space and climate-resilient agriculture on Earth. In addition, Timothy serves as Access Coordinator for EMPHASIS-Belgium, facilitating access to plant phenotyping platforms within the consortium.

Andreas Joined the Van Damme lab as part of his master II studies in biochemistry and biotechnology at the Ghent university. During his master II project he focussed on inactivation strategies of the endocytic adaptor complexes, the AP-2 complex and the TPLATE complex. After graduating, he joined the lab as a PhD student to work on a proteomics project with the AP-2 complex and the TPLATE complex, looking for novel players in clathrin-mediated endocytosis. He is currently funded by an FWO fundamental research fellowship since 2020.

Making Research Infrastructure Running Smoothly...

I am a multi-disciplinary scientist and generalist with 10+ years of experience in leading research programs, managing a team and mentoring young academics, guiding them to make the right choices. My professional interests are as broad as my skills. I have been doing technical development in light microscopy, optomechanics, optical manipulation, vision. I also speak the language of the Life Sciences. I worked on the biophysics of the cytoskeleton, cell division, and the mechanics of embryo development. In the past, I have been heading a multi-disciplinary team of engineers, physicists, and biologists that seeks solutions to technical challenges and basic research questions. We have been developing dedicated microscopy, micromechanical and microfluidics instruments, and image processing pipelines to address basic questions in developmental biology. After leaving fundamental research in academia in 2023, I have changed gear and focus on research service, operations, tool development and instrument engineering using all my expertise and experience.

Matilde Sanches graduated in 2017 as master of Biodiversity and Plant Biotechnology at University of Coimbra, Portugal. During her master thesis, under the guidance of Prof. Jorge Canhoto, she studied developmental epigenetics throughout somatic embryogenesis of tamarillo plant (Solanum betaceum, Cav.), performing experiments and developing skills (particularly immunofluorescence microscopy) at Pilar S. Testillano's lab in CIB-CSIC, Madrid, Spain. After a one-year experience as Project Developer - DIVA project (H2020) and SKAN Platform activities - at INOVISA (Lisbon, Portugal) and at the Centre for Investigation and Transference of Technology to Community Development (CITT - Maputo, Mozambique), she enrolled in the Plants for Life Doctoral Program in 2019, from ITQB NOVA (Lisbon, Portugal). During her PhD project, focussing on the study of quantitative genetics and mechanisms behind water stress tolerance in grass pea (Lathyrus sativus), she had the opportunity to foster a collaboration between Dr. Carlota Vaz Patto's lab (PlantX group, ITQB NOVA, Oeiras, Portugal) and Prof. Frank Van Breusegem'lab (Oxidative Stress Signalling group, PSB-VIB, Ghent, Belgium). Her main scientific interests are I&D in the agronomic sector, particularly stress resilience in plants, the genetics and epigenetics underlying it; and more important, the potential applications of that field of knowledge in crop improvement and breeding programs, with a particular fondness for orphan crops. More recent (but obviously related) passions are statistics, experimental design and data science, and it was in that framework that she recently joint Hilde Nelissen's Systems Biology of Yield group at PSV-VIB (Ghent, Belgium).

I obtained my master’s degree in Biochemistry and Biotechnology at the Ghent University in 2021. During my thesis I worked in the Pauwels lab on the combination of doubled haploid breeding and multiplex gene editing in maize. Later that year, I joined the group of Dirk Inzé and Hilde Nelissen where I worked on the BREEDIT ERC project, with a focus on genotype-phenotype correlation in multiplex edited maize lines. In 2022, I obtained an FWO PhD fellowship and joined the Pauwels lab again. The main focus of my PhD is to improve regeneration in maize with the goal to expand the number of transformable maize inbred lines, while also developing gene editing strategies.