New PhD Student starts at iDiv as part of MiRA ITN

Dimitra has recently joined the group of Molecular Interaction Ecology at the German Centre for Integrated Biodiversity Research (iDiv) as a PhD student. She is part of MiRA EU-ITN, a Marie Sklodowska-Curie program funded network to study Microbe-induced Resistance to Agricultural Pests. Her mission is to unravel how tomato plants respond to beneficial soil fungi like Trichoderma spp. and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi; and further investigate the effect on the performance of aboveground chewing and sucking insect pests as well as their natural enemies. To achieve her goal she is going to use transcriptomic approaches and metabolomics to decipher the molecular and chemical mechanisms underlying microbe- induced resistance, different tomato plant lines and bioassays to study insect performance and behavior. For more information on MiRA EU-ITN click here.