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Patrick Willems obtained his master degree at Ghent University after plant studying cold stress signaling in plants during six months in the Vaughan Hurry lab in Umeå (Sweden). Afterwards, he continued studying plant abiotic stress signaling during his PhD in the oxidative stress signaling group of Frank Van Breusegem in collaboration with the proteomics group of Kris Gevaert. This led to multiple first-author papers and several co-authorships, mostly entailing integrative –OMICS analysis of transcriptome, proteome or other datasets. As a postdoctoral researcher, he was shortly active in the proteogenomic annotation of microbial species. More recently, he is focusing on studying post-translational modifications (PTMs) in plants. Recently published work on this topic incudes the characterization of S-sulfenylation at a site-specific level in Arabidopsis and the development of an integrative plant PTM database, ‘The Plant PTM Viewer’. The bridging theme in his research is the integration and interpretation of large (multi-)omics data to make new discoveries or help addressing specific biological research questions.

Peng has obtained his master degree in Biochemistry and Molecular biology from the School of life science, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China in 2013. His master thesis was focus on the difference between chloroplast and plastid division under the supervision of Prof. Hongbin Wang. In 2015, he joined the Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology (PSC) as a research assistant in Plant Molecular Nutrition Group under the supervision of Dr. Mingguang Lei, where he worked on endocytosis mechanism of the phosphate transporters. In February 2019 he started his PhD research in the lab of Dr. Jenny Russinova to work on endocytic regulation of receptor kinase-mediated signaling in Arabidopsis funded a CSC scholarship.

After completing his studies in biology at the University of Belgrade in the lab of Ivana Momcilovic, Nemanja moved to Prague (Czechia) and finished his PhD in 2016 in the lab of Viktor Zarsky. There he studied the involvement of the exocyst complex in secondary cell formation of xylem. The same year he moved to Ghent and joined the lab of Jenny Russinova at PSB-VIB. In 2018, he obtained an FWO postdoctoral grant to study the importance of brassinosteroid biosynthesis and distribution for plant development.

Timothy has a keen interest in space and biology. After having worked as a student in the Research and Development department of Colruyt Group on Vertical farming technology and hydroponics, his ambition to get further into academics grew. In 2020, he graduated as Master of Science in Biology at Ghent University. Following his master thesis, which focused on the a growth-promoting cytochrome P450 78A, he obtained an FWO-grant for a project that builds further on the same topic. His project focuses on unraveling the reaction catalyzed by CYP78A and clarifying its regulatory network, with the aim to acquire knowledge that can lead to the development of applications with beneficial effects on many agricultural crops in a non-GMO manner (e.g. a biostimulant). The project will function as a stepping stone for his future goals, which involve conducting biological research in the context of space.