Recognizing Plant Cell authors: Camilla Ferrari

Camilla Ferrari, first author of Expression atlas of Selaginella moellendorffii provides insights into the evolution of vasculature, secondary metabolism and roots

Current Position: Postdoctoral scientist, VIB-UGENT Center for Plant System Biology, Ghent Belgium

Education: B.Sc. Biological Sciences, University of Pisa, Italy; M.Sc. Plant and Microbe Biotechnologies, University of Pisa; Ph.D. Molecular Plant Physiology, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam, Germany

Non-scientific Interests: great fan of BBC (Beer, Bread and Cheese), long runs, and travels

Brief bio: After the bachelor’s degree in biology I decided to focus my studies on plants and pursued a master’s degree in plant biotechnology. For my master thesis I joined the lab of Dr. Marek Mutwil in Potsdam and stayed afterwards for a PhD. While my initial background is molecular biology, during my PhD I developed interest in bioinformatics, which allowed me to turn my PhD project into a more computational one. During this time I performed comparative transcriptomics studies of the Archaeplastida kingdom, spanning from unicellular algae to flowering plants, mainly applied to diurnal regulation, but also to responses to stresses and vasculature and secondary metabolism evolution. I recently started my post-doc in Prof. Klaas Vandepoele lab in VIB-PSB, Ghent, pursuing a comparative study on gene regulatory networks of vascular plants.