Maria Stefania Grillo

Maria Stefania Grillo is a Research Director at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Institute of Biosciences and BioResources (IBBR), Portici. She heads the IBBR UOS Portici unit and has extensive experience in plant genetics and biotechnology research. Previously, she served as Head of IGV UOS Portici (2002-2010) and Senior Scientist at the CNR-Plant Genetics Institute (2002 onwards).

Her research focuses on plant genetics and biotechnologies applied to breeding of vegetable crops and sustainable agriculture systems. Dr. Grillo coordinates a research group that identifies and characterizes genes involved in plant stress responses using functional genomics and advanced phenotyping in Solanaceae (tomato, pepper, potato) and Arabidopsis. Her work has particularly emphasized RNA regulatory mechanisms in osmotic stress response pathways. She has contributed significantly to understanding how traditional crop varieties respond to environmental stresses.

Dr. Grillo's extensive publication record demonstrates consistent research themes in plant stress physiology, particularly drought and salinity responses in tomato and pepper. Her recent work has increasingly incorporated advanced genomic and phenotyping technologies to understand the molecular basis of stress tolerance in traditional crop varieties. She has been actively involved in multiple EU and national research projects related to sustainable agriculture and crop improvement.

She serves on the Scientific Committee of the Portici Camps Foundation and has been a member of various academic committees including the Doctorate School Committee 'Biologia dei Sistemi' at the University of Salerno (2010-2017). Dr. Grillo has tutored and supervised numerous undergraduate and PhD students as well as post-doctoral researchers.

Her research group has been involved in significant projects including Genome Editing in Plants (PlantED), E-crops for Sustainable Digital Agriculture, AgroBiodiversità Campana, and the EU H2020 TOMRES project focused on stress tolerance in tomato. She serves as PI for IBBR Portici in several major initiatives including the National Research Centre for Agricultural Technologies (Agritech) under the PNRR program.