Crispus Mbaluto successfully defends his PhD thesis!

Picture: Jessil Ann Pajar

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On 21 October 2020 we had the first PhD defence in MIE. Crispus Mbaluto defended his PhD thesis with great success; due to the Corona measurements the defence was held online. The hat that Crispus received after the defence – a great tradition in Germany, is showing the organisms that he studied. It was made by his fellow PhD students.

Here are some words from the new Doctor:

“It is with great pleasure to share with you that I successfully defended my Ph.D. research on 21^st October 2020 and earned a doctorate in Ecology from Friedrich-Schiller-University-Jena, Germany. My Ph.D. journey took 4 solid years and 1 global pandemic. I'm supposed and expected to feel proud of my achievement, but honestly, I feel humbled, grateful, and indebted to the journey with the support I received from my advisors Prof. Dr. Nicole M. van Dam and Dr. Ainhoa Martínez-Medina, as well as interactions with the members and colleagues of the Molecular Interaction Ecology (MIE) group and other working groups at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig. As my Ph.D. journey ends, a new voyage starts…. I look forward to continuing along with the line of chemical ecology research in aboveground-belowground plant-mediated interactions, systemic induced responses, metabolomics, transcriptomics, behavioral ecology, root-knot nematodes, insect herbivores and microbes. “