Julia Mars

Plant Stress Resilience & Experimental and Computational Development
Utrecht University

I am Julia and I am a second year PhD student with dr. Dorota Kawa at Utrecht University. My research focuses on how a specific group of microbes regulates the deposition of suberin in roots of Sorghum bicolor, and how these microbial interactions can be deployed to develop plants that are more resilient against conditions such as drought and flooding. I will be taking over from Gyöngyi Macias Honti as chair of the EPS PhD council.

Thijs Stegmann

Cell and Development Biology
Wageningen University and Research

My name is Thijs, a second year PhD candidate in Viola Willemsen’s group in Wageningen. I study how natural variation in root system architecture can cause a plant to be more resilient to drought stress in Arabidopsis thaliana and which genes drive development towards a more resilient root system. I will become the new secretary of the PhD council next year, following up on Maxence Longuemare!