SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD
Meet the BOOSTER SAB experts
Dorothea Bartels
Dorothea Bartels initiated early studies of resurrection plants. After her PhD in Botany at the University of Hannover, she worked for several years as a postdoc at the Plant Breeding Institute in Cambridge, then started to work on resurrection plants when she became a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding in Cologne. She now leads research on plant physiology and biochemistry at the University of Bonn. She chose to work on Craterostigma plantagineum as model plant for desiccation tolerance. She is the editor in chief for the journal Planta and she has been involved with editorial work in several other journals.
Position & Organisation
Professor at University of Bonn, Germany
Adriana Silva Hemerly
Dr. Adriana Hemerly is Full Professor and Researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ, Brazil). She coordinates the Laboratory of Plant Molecular Biology since 1997, identifying regulatory networks that integrate environmental signaling with plant development, focusing on plant cell cycle regulation and plant association with beneficial bacteria. The research aims to develop biotechnological tools to increase plant productivity and adaptation to environmental changes. She has a Bachelor in Genetics at UFRJ (Brazil), a PhD in Biotechnology at UGent (Belgium) and a Post-Doctorate in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (NY, USA). She has been Coordinator of all the Biotechnology Graduate Programs in Brazil at CAPES (2014 – 2022).
Position & Organisation
Full professor and Researcher at the Medical Biochemistry Institute (Coordinator of the Laboratory of Plant Molecular Biology), at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Randall J. Wisser
Dr. Wisser joined INRAE as a research director in 2020 where he currently leads a project on the integration of ecophysiology and quantitative genetics for maize adaptation to climate change. He obtained his PhD in Plant Breeding and Genetics at Cornell University (New York, USA) and was a USDA-AFRI postdoctoral fellow in quantitative genetics and plant pathology at North Carolina State University (North Carolina, USA). Dr. Wisser spent a decade leading a research and teaching program at the University of Delaware, where he now holds a joint appointment. His research spans biological scales to investigate genetic diversity, crop adaptation, experimental evolution, and disease resistance, in addition to pedagogical contributions for active learning.
Position & Organisation
Research Director at INRAE (National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment), France
