معرفی
Paula Gomez Zapata is a postdoctoral researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and a guest researcher at Utrecht University (UU). Her work focuses on the genomic features driving evolutionary transitions in rust fungi, particularly Cronartium pini. She previously worked at Purdue University, where she studied rust fungal diversity, host-specificity, and natural enemies through fieldwork, bioinformatics, and molecular biology techniques.
- Education: Ph.D. in Plant Pathology (Purdue University, 2022), BSE in Agronomic Engineering (Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2015).
Her research spans integrative bioinformatics, mycology, and plant pathology, emphasizing fungal genomics, biological control strategies, and evolutionary dynamics of plant pathogens. She combines morphological and molecular data with next-generation sequencing to study rust fungi in tropical ecosystems.
Paula has extensive experience in phylogenetic analyses, genome assemblies, fungal cultures, and molecular techniques like DNA extraction, PCR, and GFP transformation. She has also trained undergraduate students in research and biology courses.
