Lidia Błaszczyk

Professor at the Institute, Head of the Department of Plant Microbiomics, Coordinator of the discipline of agriculture and horticulture at the Poznan Doctoral School of Institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences, biotechnologist, molecular geneticist, mycologist. Her research focuses on understanding the structure of the different plant species microbiome and to describe the factors that determine changes in the plant-associated microbial community, as well as deciphering how these changes affect the functioning of the plant genome. Recently, she has been interested in epigenetic mechanisms, mainly the participation of microRNA and siRNA in shaping the interactions of plants with beneficial and harmful microscopic fungi. The overarching goal of this work is to provide the knowledge to develop new strategies to protect plants from devastating fungal diseases.