معرفی
Francisco Dini-Andreote serves as Associate Professor of Plant Science at Penn State University's College of Agricultural Sciences and holds the endowed Huck Early Career Chair in Microbial Community Ecology. His research integrates microbiome science, plant-microbe interactions, and ecological theory to advance sustainable agriculture. Affiliations include the Huck Institutes' Microbiome Center, Center for Root and Rhizosphere Biology, and Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics.
Research focuses on:
- Microbiome assembly in response to environmental gradients (e.g., urbanization, climate change)
- Engineering rhizosphere communities for crop resilience against drought and pathogens
- Soil health restoration via anaerobic disinfestation techniques
- Ecological processes governing microbial coalescence and food web dynamics
- Molecular mechanisms of plant-microbe signaling under stress
- Cross-kingdom synthetic communities for agricultural applications
Awards include the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Early Career Chair (2024). Grant leadership encompasses USDA-funded projects ($1M+) optimizing organic farming through microbiome manipulation. Actively advises graduate students and leads the Dini-Andreote Lab, which collaborates with international teams to study soil-plant-microbe interfaces.
