Dr Martin Balcerowicz
Principal Investigator & Royal Society University Research Fellow
Martin is originally from Germany, where he did his PhD at the University of Cologne in the lab of Ute Hoecker, studying light signalling mechanisms in Arabidopsis. He moved to the Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge University (SLCU), UK, as a postdoc, investigating light and temperature signalling crosstalk in the lab of Philip Wigge and developing plant hormone biosensors in the group of Alexander Jones. In 2022 he joined the University of Dundee to start his own research group to investigate temperature-controlled gene expression in plants.
Dr Cecilia Decima Oneto
Research Technician
Cecilia is a geneticist (University of Moron, Argentina) and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Buenos Aires, Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry. Since 2007, she has been a researcher at the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) in Argentina. As of May 2024, she works as a Research Technician in the Balcerowicz lab. Her specialty is Plant Biotechnology, focusing on transgenesis and gene editing applied to plant improvement for abiotic stress tolerance.
Emma Hardy
EASTBIO PhD Student
Emma studied biology at the University of Freiburg in Germany, where she discovered an interest in molecular biology and plant development. She started her PhD in the Balcerowicz lab in autumn 2022. Her project aims to characterise potential novel regulators of temperature responses and their regulation at the post-transcriptional level in the model plant Arabidopsis.
Aminin Taqrir Akramin
Royal Society PhD Student
Aminin is from Malaysia and graduated in Biological Sciences from University of Dundee. He worked as a Research Technician in the Balcerowicz lab in 2022/23 before starting as a PhD student in the lab in 2023. His project focuses on investigating the role of translation initiation factors on plant temperature responses. Outside of the lab, he enjoys baking, going to concerts and playing Ultimate frisbee.
Onyinyechi (Brenda) Benjamin (MSc Student)
Alumni
Leon Reddick (Honours Student)
Douglas Freeburn (Integrated Masters Student)
Jennifer Anderson (Honours Student)
Jennie Yang (Honours Student)