For the past 10 years Christian has managed the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored programme Engineering the Nitrogen Symbiosis for Africa led from the University of Cambridge linking ten institution around the world focussed on delivering a new generation of more sustainable crops less dependent on fertiliser inputs due to enhanced symbiosis with soil microorganisms. Christian has developed a model of centralised crop engineering platforms spanning construct design and assembly, transformation, genetics, characterisation and field testing.

Doris is working as the Barley Genetics and Phenotyping Manager at the CSC. Before taking up this post she was working as a postdoctoral researcher in the ENSA (Engineering Nitrogen Symbiosis for Africa) project at the University of Cambridge. Prior to this she was doing research at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN) and at the University of the Ryukyus in Japan. She gained her PhD degree in Genetics from the University of Basel, Switzerland carrying out her research project at the Friedrich-Miescher-Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI).

Darius is a PhD student in the Oldroyd group, investigating the impact of nutrient levels on symbiotic permissibility in barley and the mechanisms by which this can be overridden for the potential of more sustainable fertiliser use in the future.

Eleni is managing the Platforms at the Crop Science Centre. These include gene synthesis, construct design and assembly, plant transformation, genetics, and sequencing. Before taking up this post she was working as a Platform manager in the ENSA (Engineering Nitrogen Symbiosis for Africa) project at the Sainsbury Laboratory. Prior to this she was working as senior research technician for the same project at the John Innes Centre in Norwich. Eleni gained her PhD degree in Plant Microbe Interactions from the University of East Anglia, UK, Norwich.

Edwin is a PhD student working with Giles Oldroyd to study the mechanisms by which plants develop mutualistic interactions with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Edwin received his BA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge. He completed his final year in the Department of Plant Sciences where he worked in John Carr’s lab, studying plant defences to viruses. During this time he also worked with Julia Davies to study the function of plant cyclic nucleotide-gated channels.

Tak received his Ph.D. at the Yonsei University, South Korea, studying biological functional gene networks in plant species. He moved to Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University for a Postdoctoral research position with Professor Giles Oldroyd, later moving on to the Crop Science Center. Tak’s research is focused on dissecting the genetic networks of model legumes in comparison with cereal crops during symbiosis with microorganisms via high-throughput transcriptomics, genetics, molecular biology and bioinformatic analysis. 

My work as a PhD student concentrates on understanding relationships between crops and beneficial microbes in the soil, specifically how these interactions relate to crop nutrition. I am investigating the molecular mechanisms that underlie symbiosis between Barley and mycorrhizal fungi, with my research being funded by the Trinity Cawthorn PhD Studentship in Crop Sciences.

I’m a PhD student working in Uta Paszkowski's Cereal Symbiosis group where I will be investigating the role of specific root types in phosphorus uptake in roots. My work will look at both the symbiotic and asymbiotic pathways with a focus on the phosphate transporters. 

Prior to starting my PhD I did my MSci in plant sciences at the University of Bristol in Jill Harrison’s lab where I worked on the evolution of meristem signalling.