Department of
Biotechnology

I teach on the conviction that a classroom should do more than transfer information. It should train students to frame a good question, to reason carefully from evidence, and to stay patient with problems that resist easy answers. I try to present the subject matter not as a settled body of facts but as an active field of enquiry, one that students are equipped to enter through a lecture, a dataset, or an experiment that does not work the first time. Mentorship, to my mind, is a partnership. I want to understand what each student is working towards, and then walk with them through the untidy, iterative reality of discovery.

The same enquiry drives my research. My group studies how plants adapt to changing environments and how agronomically important traits are built, integrating multi-omics with genome editing to move from correlation towards causation. The work is increasingly data intensive. The scale of genomic, transcriptomic and phenotypic information now within reach exceeds what any one mind can hold, and I regard computational fluency, held alongside experimental rigour, as essential preparation for the next generation of biotechnologists. The habits I care most about are a curiosity that outlasts the semester and an honesty that outlasts the result.