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
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
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
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: