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Robin Pottie graduated in 2017 as Bachelor in Biomedical Laboratory Technology at Odisee Technologycampus Gent.
During his bachelor, he worked on a project for Dr. Simon Stael developing genetic and chemical tools to alter the calcium flux in chloroplasts, which he continued after obtaining his degree.

Studying regulatory DNA with deep learning

After a Masters in Plant Biotechnology, a career in industry and another Masters in Bioinformatics, I started in November 2020 on a quest to unravel regulatory DNA expression mechanisms in plants. I try to convince computers to figure out these intricate mechanisms so that we can learn from what they learned. Ultimately, this could lead to food crops that are better adapted to a changing environment.

After finishing his bachelor degree in Farmaceutical and Biological Techniques at the Kaho Sint-Lieven hogeschool in Ghent, Jonah started his working career in the Molecular Pharming lab of professor Ann Depicker in 2006. Upon her retirement, he joined the Vascular Development group of professor Bert De Rybel in 2017 where he has been working ever since.

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.
 
 
 
 

Evelien Mylle graduated in 2001 as Industrial engineer, specialization biochemistry at the Provinciale Industriele Hogeschool (PIH) in Kortrijk, Belgium. After working 6 months at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (DMBR) at Gent University, she moved to Brussels to work at the Scientific Institute of Public Health (IPH), section Biotechnology and Biosafety (SBB) to trace genetic modified organisms in food. Since August 2004, she joined the former Cell Biology Group (Prof. Danny Geelen) at PSB. From 2006 this group changed to the Brassinosteroids group under the supervision of Dr. Eugenia Russinova, where she contributed to study the Brassinosteroid pathway, mainly by using fluorescence microscopy techniques. In order to become more specialized in the microscopy field, she moved from January 2015 to the Advanced Live Cell Imaging group under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Van Damme to further develop new microscopy tools for plant cell biologists at PSB.