Agnieszka Żmieńko

Agnieszka Żmieńko leads the Department of Plant Genomics at IBCH PAS, Poznań, Poland. She is also an academic teacher and researcher at the Institute of Computing Science, Poznan University of Technology. Educated in biological sciences, she has focused for many years now on investigating the phenomenon of intraspecies genetic variation in plants. Specifically, she is interested in understanding the links between natural genetic polymorphism and phenotypic variation, plant adaptation and short-term evolution. To this end she has employed cutting-edge genomic approaches, most recently nanopore sequencing techniques, which she uses to identify complex gene duplications and characterize them at both the genetic and epigenetic levels. She has been a member of international research initiatives such as the International Community project dedicated to Arabidopsis genome reannotation, as well as EPI-CATCH and ROOT-BENEFIT COST actions. She has also contributed to numerous projects related to plant response to biotic and abiotic stress, which included diverse species e.g. cabbage, cucumber, maize, barley, wheat and Nicotiana benthamiana.