Our group is split across two continents, a mere 13,000 km/8077 miles away!
In Adelaide, Australia, we are part of the School of Agriculture, Food, and Wine and the Waite Research Institute at the University of Adelaide. Based on the beautiful and historic Waite Campus. Jenny moved here in January 2021, where she is an Associate Professor of plant synthetic biology. Her group is using synthetic biology to develop sustainable novel crops for the production of food and bioproducts, as well as to understand the fundamentals of glycosylation in plants. This includes the development of plants to support astronauts on longterm Space missions as part of the Plants4Space consortium, which in turn will help the development of efficient closed environment agriculture (CEA or vertical farming). Our group is particularly excited about some non-traditional crops, such as duckweed.
In Calfornia, USA, our group is part of the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division (EGSB), part of the Biosciences Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL). Jenny was a Staff Scientist there until Dec. 2020, and is now an Affiliate Staff Scientist. Jenny also has a secondary appointment in the Biological and Systems Engineering Division.
We form the Plant Systems Biology Lab in the Feedstocks Division at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), based in Emeryville, CA. JBEI is one of four Department of Energy funded Bioenergy Research Centers (BRCs) – our sister centers are GLBRC, CBI, and CABBI. We are also part of the mCAFEs SFA, led by Trent Northen, to use precise editing of microbial communities to understand the biology of grass rhizobiomes. As part of this, we are making use of fabricated ecosystems: EcoPODs and EcoFABs – part of our efforts to bridge the scale gap between the lab and field.
Explore the site for information about our group, our research and publications and how to contact us. Thanks for visiting!
Mortimer Laboratory 