Crop Transformation Center

Who We Are

Numerous faculty and staff from seven academic units contribute to the CTC. Faculty are located at the UF/IFAS main campus and the Citrus Research and Education Center (C-REC), Lake Alfred, FL. The initial working group consists of the following faculty:

Leadership

Charlie Messina, Crop Transformation Center Director and Professor
Eric Triplett, Founder, Crop Transformation Center, Professor & Department Chair

Support Staff

Laras Salsabila, Administrative Assistant and Project Manager
Eva Sailly, Communications Specialist

Plant Transformation Team

Using a comprehensive approach to understand and improve the genetics of ornamental and specialty crops, incorporating genetics, genomics, molecular biology and biotechnology to improve plant performance.

Alfred Huo, Lead, Plant Transformation
- Huo Lab

Plant Genome Engineering

PGE research focuses on advancing tools and technologies for genome editing and transformation to accelerate gene discovery and functional analysis across crop species.

Can Baysal; Lead, Virus-Mediated Genome Engineering

Disease Resistance

Rosemary Loria, Lead, Plant Pathology
Zhonglin Mou Citrus greening product development
Jose Huguet Tapia, Predictive plant pathology and informatics
Nian Wang, Citrus greening product development

Phenomics

Diego Jarquin, Lead Multi-OMICS Genetic Prediction & AI
Esteban Rios, Plant Breeder Workgroup Chair
Charlie Li, Robotics, automation & AI
Kevin Wang, Field phenomics & AI

Trait biology

Kelly Balmant, Lead, Bioinformatics and Transformation
Fredy Altpeter, Transformation consultant
Kevin Begcy, Gene-editing monocots
Alfred Huo, Gene-editing dicots
Jeongim Kim, Plant secondary metabolism

Breeding

Marcio Resende, Lead and Chair, UF/IFAS Plant Breeders Working Group
Vance Whitaker, Strawberry breeding & genetics

Human Dimensions

Bachir Kassas, Co-Lead Consumer Behavior and Preferences
Kay Kelsey, Lead, Human Dimensions and Program Evaluation
Lisa House, Consumer economics, market research

Master of Science and Doctoral Students	Post Doctoral Researchers	Research Technicians
Trishna Tiwari, Plant Breeding Mentor: Charlie Messina LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/trishna-tiwari	Juan S. Panelo Mentor: Charlie Messina LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jspanelo/ ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0075-0157	Sameena Tanwir Alfred Huo Lab Working on establishing an in vitro system for rapid screening of HLB using alternative hosts.
Sri Madhulika Jetti, Plant Breeding Mentor: Charlie Messina LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/sri-madhulika-jetti	Ignacio Hisse Mentor: Charlie Messina ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5167-9557
Jasdeep Singh, Horticultural Sciences Mentor: Charlie Messina LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasdeep-s-96a646180/	Gustavo César Visentini Mentor: Charlie Messina LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/gustavo-cesar-visentini
Taylor Sawyer, Plant Breeding Mentor: Charlie Messina LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/taylorsawyer07	Wardatou Boukari Mentor: Rosemary Loria www.linkedin.com/in/warda-boukari https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RQ-K32EAAAAJ&hl=en&authuser=1
Melanie Cabrera, Plant Breeding Mentor: Charlie Messina LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-cabrera-01	Julian Garcia-Abadillo Mentors: Diego Jarquin & Charlie Messina Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabadillo/ Github: https://github.com/gabadillo ORCID: https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0000-0002-4672-8908
Fangchen Liu Mentor: Alfred Huo	Tao Jiang Mentor: Alfred Huo He is working on genetic transformation on woody plants including citrus by using morphogenic regulators.
Keila Rodriguez Mentor: Alfred Huo Working on citrus mature tissue transformation and gene editing through grafting.	Chi Nguyen Mentor: Alfred Huo She is working transcriptomic analysis and method development in transformation and gene editing of diverse crop species including citrus.
	Jianhui Liu Mentor: Bachir Kassas. Playbook Project to determine consumer preferences for gene edited orange juice. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-f76XewAAAAJ&hl=en

External Advisory Board

Renee Lafitte, Director, Crops Research and Development, Gates Foundation
Brian Doyle, Managing Director, Accenture
John Arbuckle, Corteva
Eugenia Saini, Executive Secretary, Regional Fund for Agricultural Technology (FONTAGRO)
Matt Joyner, CEO, Florida Citrus Mutual

Interested in joining our team?

We are hiring Ph.D. students and post-doctoral associates to join our team:

Ph.D. Research Assistantship in Plant Biotechnology at UF/IFAS CTC