Mohitul Hossain is currently pursuing his PhD at the Centre for Crop and Disease Management (CCDM), Curtin University, specialising in bioinformatics with a focus on fungal genomics. He previously earned a PhD in Plant Science (focused on plant ecophysiology) from the University of Western Australia, a Master's in European Forestry from University of Freiburg, Germany, and a BSc in Forestry from University of Chittagong, Bangladesh. Mohitul has a strong background in forest management, plant ecophysiology and phytopathology, emphasising the understanding of plant-pathogen interactions at the whole plant level. As he delves deeper into his studies, he is transitioning towards computational disciplines related to plant-pathogen interactions and disease management. His research now revolves around leveraging next-generation sequencing technologies and innovative bioinformatics approaches to advance the study and monitoring of local fungal pathogen populations and to create decision-support tools that aid in effective crop disease management.
PhD Project Title: Comparative bioinformatics across crop pathogen pan-genomes and developing novel solutions for effector-based crop disease management
Supervisors: Dr James Hane, Dr Huyen Phan
This project aims to integrate cutting-edge patho-genomic tools, including updated effector prediction methods, with fungal pan-genomics to identify regional effector profiles and other pathogenicity markers such as fungicide resistance. In addition, by mining pan-genome data alongside cultivar-specific disease phenotype data, this project aims to innovate bioinformatic and statistical approaches for predicting new effector candidate loci. Major outputs of this project will be step-change improvements in genome-based pathogen diagnostics, which will enable the low-cost, rapid identification of region-specific pathogen effector profiles and emerging fungicide resistance, to provide fast-tracked information for decision support in crop disease management and to enhance pre-breeding of disease resistant crop cultivars.