Francesco Cristofano, PhD

Post-doctoral Scientist

Francesco comes from the province of Napoli, Italy. He studied Agricultural Sciences (B.Sc. and M.Sc. level) at the department of Agriculture of the University Federico II. During his Ph.D. program he focused on quantifying the plant stress ameliorating power of Protein Hydrolysate biostimulants using a combined phenological, physiological and biochemical approach. He has joined Karlova group twice as an exchange Ph.D. student in February 2022, and later in February 2023 as a PostDoctoral researcher. His current research focuses on discovering the molecular mechanisms surrounding the plant response to seaweed-based biostimulants.

Jielin Wang

Lab Manager and Technician

Jielin comes from Hebei, China. She holds a BSc in Horticulture from Northwest A&F University in China, followed by her MSc in Plant Sciences at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. She conducted her MSc thesis research in Christa Testerink’s lab, investigating the upstream regulators and protein interactors of LBD16, a central regulator of lateral root development in Arabidopsis thaliana roots under salt stress conditions.

Following this, she completed an internship in Ruud de Maagd’s lab, focusing on the characterization of the regulatory network of MADS-box transcription factors in tomato fruit. In September 2023, Jielin joined Rumyana Karlova’s group as a lab technician, where she is dedicated to exploring the functions of biostimulants on plant growth under abiotic stress conditions.

Roland Berdaguer

PhD candidate

Roland comes from Vienna, Austria. He did a BSc in Food Science and Biotechnology at BOKU (Vienna) before moving to the Netherlands for an MSc in Plant Biotechnology at Wageningen University. He has worked on several different research projects, including barley cell biology at Eva Stöger’s lab (BOKU, Vienna) and the evolution of root nodule symbiosis at the labs of René Geurts (WUR, Wageningen) and Pierre-Marc Delaux (LRSV, Toulouse).

Roland joined Rumyana Karlova’s group in September 2020, for a PhD about the rhizosphere microbiome of tomato and other Solanaceae plants under drought stress. The main goal of his project is to find out how plants modify the microbial communities around their roots under drought, for their own benefit. This PhD project is embedded in the larger MICROP consortium. In his free time, Roland likes working on DIY projects, as well as fermenting drinks and foods.