I am currently a PhD student at Curtin University, as a member of the CCDM's Advanced Bioinformatic Approaches foundation project team. My research aims to apply novel bioinformatics and pan-genomics methods to advance the understanding of how fungal pathogens have become specialised to cause plant disease. My project will identify common sets of genes and genomic features specific to different infection strategies, investigate emerging pathogenicity adaptations within mutation hotspots, and discover novel pathogenicity genes across a wide range of fungal plant pathogen species. The goal of my research is also to translate this knowledge into development of new genome-based methods of crop disease diagnosis and surveillance to improve Australian food security. Previously, I completed my undergraduate degree in Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology in 2021. I then went on to use bioinformatics to study alpaca colour pigmentation for Honours in 2022.
PhD Project Title: Australia-wide pan-genome sequencing of hundreds of fungal isolates and multiple crop pathogen species to study virulence gene evolution.
Supervisor: Dr James Hane
Co-supervisor: Dr Pao Theen See