November 2022

The lab has been awarded a small NERC-supported award from the Grantham Institute at Imperial. We will study callus regeneration in a 3D-printed hydrogel module.

 

October 2022

Alexandra Cazacu is joining our lab for her first projects in the Molecular and Cellular Biosciences M.Res. program. She will work on callus regeneration.

Zhengxi Tang is joining our lab for her first projects in the Molecular Plant and Microbial Sciences M.Res. program. She will work on the oomycete-root bioelectric interaction.

GS has been interviewed by the Imperial's podcast Never Lick the Spoon, where he discusses the future of soulless cultivations and potential applications of the newest 3D printing technique to make artificial substrates for root growth.

 

September 2022

We are excited that Owen Iredale is joining the lab as a PhD student. He will study the bioelectricity of plant tissue regeneration, using root and callus regeneration as model systems to understand the role of membrane potential in tissue self-organization. Welcome Owen, it will be fun!

We started a collaboration with the Italian SME EdiVite, who is supporting some of our work on the bioelectricity of callus regeneration.

 

August 2022

Fantastic news: we have been awarded a grant from EPSRC's Impact Acceleration Account to pursue the optimization of our hydrogel module for vertical farming and root control in microgravity environments. It might be the beginning of a long and exciting path for the lab! Maddalena and Ali will work on this for at least one more year.

 

June 2022

GS, Maddalena Salvalaio and Eleonora Moratto are all heading to Belfast to attend the ICAR2022 meeting on Arabidopsis. Maddalena and Eleonora will present one poster each, on their current research. We look forward to meeting new and old friends!

Juliana Ma is joining our lab to work on her project for the MSci Applied Biosciences and Biotechnology course. She will be studying root regeneration and cytokinin.

 

May 2002

GS gave an outreach talk at the SciFi convention Reclamation 2022, in London. The title of the talk was "Feel the Force: how plants perceive gravitational and electric fields". Lots of interesting people and excellent questions from the general public. A fun day overall!

 

April 2022

Doruk Kurukahveci joins our lab for his second project as part of his MRes Molecular Plant Microbial Sciences course. His project is based on a comparative analysis of root electrotropism in Arabidopsis ecotypes and other plant species. Do you want your coffee with or without an electric field?

 

March 2022

Ignacio Sparrow Munoz and Alexandra Hopkins are joining us for their undergraduate final-year projects. A mix of regeneration and root electrotropism. That sounds like fun!

 

February 2022

The lab has been awarded a departmental Wide Participation PhD scholarship, to start in October 2022. The project will be at the interface between bioelectricity and regeneration in plant tissues.

 

January 2022

Samaneh Najafi is joining us as a visiting PhD student from the University of Verona (Italy). As part of her PhD studies, she will work on an exciting project on the interaction between external electric fields and callus regeneration in grapevine varieties. A warm welcome to Sama!