Afroditi obtained her Master’s degree in Advanced Experimental and Computational Biosciences at the University of Thessaly, Greece, in 2022, where she worked on plant-fungal transkingdom RNAi. During her studies she participated at the iGEM competition, a worldwide synthetic biology competition, as a team member in 2019, a team advisor at 2021 and a team instructor at 2022. In 2022, she moved to Belgium and joined the research group of Prof. Dr. Sofie Goormachtig and started a PhD (FWO fellowship) under the supervision of Dr. Sylwia Struk, at the VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology. Her research focuses on the interaction of nitrogen-fixing rhizobia and Soybean, and the regulation of the nodulation process. More specifically, her project concentrates on the final steps of the Autoregulation of Nodulation (AON) pathway and the Too Much Love (TML) genes of Soybean, and how they control nodulation.

Predoctoral fellow

In the context of her master dissertation, Davina performed research at the Rhizosphere group on the involvement of germin-like proteins (GLPs) in the establishment of arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi (AMF) symbiosis. This thesis was conducted with the aim of increasing the understanding of plant genes, such as GLPs, in mediating AMF colonization, which in the long term may enhance AMF-induced crop growth benefits, and thereby its agricultural applicability as biofertilizer. In 2023, she began her PhD, focusing on expanding soybean cultivation toward northern latitudes. Her research explores the coexistence of beneficial local Bradyrhizobium species and non-diazotrophic Tardiphaga species within functional soybean nodules, with the goal of determining whether Tardiphaga acts as a symbiotic helper or as a competitive cheater.

Predoctoral fellow

Emma obtained her Master’s degree in Biochemistry-Biotechnology at Ghent University in 2022. For her Master thesis, she did an Erasmus exchange to Bremen University (Germany), where she worked on the interaction between rice and the endophyte Azoarcus olearius. After her studies, she started a PhD (FWO fellowship) in the research group of Prof. Dr. Sofie Goormachtig, under supervision of Dr. Sylwia Struk, at the VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology. Her PhD research concerns the interaction between soybean and nitrogen-fixing rhizobia, a symbiotic interaction which is called nodulation. In particular, she focuses on the regulation of nodulation and the receptor kinase NARK in this signalling pathway.

In 2021, I graduated with a Master of Science in Biology from Ghent University. My thesis, conducted at the Rhizosphere lab, focused on identifying bacteria capable of assisting lettuce in coping with cold stress. Following graduation, I joined the Lab of Microbiology under the supervision of Professor Anne Willems at Ghent University with Professor Sofie Goormachtig of the Rhizosphere lab as my co-supervisor, contributing to the 'Soja in 1000 tuinen' project. Here, I participated in a large-scale isolation campaign aimed at discovering rhizobia strains within soybean root nodules capable of nodulating soybeans at northern latitudes. Subsequently, in 2022, I obtained an FWO grant to investigate the underlying mechanisms behind variations in nodulation efficiency among different Bradyrhizobium strains, with the goal of optimizing this interaction.

Career path

Lara obtained her Master’s degree in Biochemistry and Biotechnology from Ghent University in 2021, where she completed her Master’s thesis in the group of Prof. Anne Willems (Laboratory of Microbiology). After a 6 month internship in the biotic stress group at KWS (Germany), she joined the group of Prof. Jane Parker in April 2022 at the department of Prof. Paul Schulze-Lefert in the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne. As part of the DFG Priority Programme DECRyPT_2125, her PhD research focused on the molecular mechanisms underlying plant iron nutrition, centred on the interplay between plant root-derived coumarins and fungal endophytes. She obtained her PhD degree in October 2025. Since 2026, Lara is a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Sofie Goormachtig (VIB–UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology). Her current research explores innovative strategies to strengthen legume–rhizobium symbioses. This includes the development of plant signalling molecules derived from poultry proteins as seed treatments to enhance nitrogen fixation in crops such as soybean, in collaboration with the company STAMAGRO.