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Aliya is a laboratory research technician at The Crop Science Centre under the supervision of Dr Jeongmin Choi's research group. She received her BSc (Hons) in Biotechnology at The University of Edinburgh. Her previous working experience includes research institutes and industry.

I have had a long career break and I am looking forward to going back to work. I have worked in the water and tobacco industries as a technician, scientist and project manager. I studied for my MCHEM later in life.

I did my Bachelor’s and Master’s studies in Biology at the University of Florence (Italy), performing an Erasmus+ traineeship at the University of Oxford, Department of Plant Sciences, in 2018 where I joined the Rhizosphere Group led by Prof. Philip Poole, where I studied the interaction between the symbiotic rhizobium microorganism Rhizobium leguminosarum and Pisum sativum plants. In early 2020 I joined the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge, as a Research Laboratory Technician within the group of Development and Reproduction led by Dr. Sebastien Andreuzza.

I finished my undergrad in China at the Nanjing Agricultural University studying Agriculture. Then I obtained my Master's degree at Wageningen University, The Netherlands, majoring in plant sciences and specialising in plant breeding and genetic resources. Because of my passion for biotic stress and genetics, I joined Sebastian's group to start my PhD in exploring more susceptibility and resistance genes underlying plant-nematode interactions.

I joined the Crop Science Center in October 2021 to pursue postgraduate degree following the completion of a Master's in Plant Pathology at Michigan State University (USA). My undergraduate work was completed at Purdue University where I studied environmental sciences. I have worked in hazardous waste remediation and sales, and founded an entrepreneurial venture to manufacture lawn and garden products called Plumstone.

I am a Biological Sciences Graduate with a strong passion about plants. I completed my undergraduate research project looking at the effects of different biotic and abiotic stresses on the ROS production in Arabidopsis thaliana. I will be now joining the Crop Breeding Technologies team of Natasha Yelina as an technician/assistant where I will be trying to work out why and how elevated temperature affects Arabidopsis fertility and reproductive success.

My interest in plant science began when I was an undergrad in Biology at the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain). After that, I was introduced to legume-bacteria symbiosis during my master's and Ph.D. at Polytechnique University of Madrid (Spain). The main topic of my Ph.D. was metal transport into the nodules of Medicago truncatula, resulting in the characterization of two molybdenum transporters involved in the delivery of this metal to the nodules. I moved to the UK after completing my Ph.D.