Ellen Slaman

Ellen obtained her BSc in Molecular Life Sciences and MSc in Biotechnology from Wageningen University. Ever since following a course called “Gene Technology” during her BSc degree, she has been fascinated by the possibility of specifically changing DNA and discovering exactly how genotypes encode phenotypes. You can imagine that when she learnt about CRISPR, it was love at first sight.

For her MSc thesis, she started working in the field of plant biotechnology and worked on developing a Cas12a genome editing toolbox for tomato. Afterwards, she performed an internship at an Enza Zaden spin-off company, again focusing on genome editing in plants: this time to improve pathogen resistance. She then returned to Wageningen University for a PhD, where she developed high-throughput methods to study the specificity of CRISPR-mediated genome editing in plants.

Now, she works as a joint postdoc in the Plant Genome Editing group led by Thomas Jacobs at the VIB-UGent Centre for Plant Systems Biology and the Genome Editing & Systems Genetics group led by Sibylle Vonesch at the VIB-KU Leuven Centre for Microbiology (https://voneschlab.sites.vib.be/en). In her current research, she leverages the even higher-throughput capacities of microorganisms to help develop tools for efficient plant genome engineering.