In recent weeks staff who teach on Biological and Biomedical Sciences programmes have been recognised in the DUSA Student-led teaching awards and the BBSE awards.
Professor Hari Hundal won in the Most Inspirational Teaching category of the DUSA Student-led teaching awards for the third year running while the team award went to the Physiology and Pharmacology and Biomembranes Teaching Staff led by Hari.
Plant Scientists at the University of Dundee and the James Hutton Institute (JHI) have won funding to establish a partnership with world-class researchers in Australia. This will allow the leading research organisations to pool their expertise towards advances in cereal science, specifically in barley developmental genetics and transcriptomics.
The School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee is a world-class academic institution with a reputation for the excellence of its research, its high quality teaching and student experience, and the strong impact of its activities outside academia. With 900 staff from over 60 countries worldwide the School provides a dynamic, multi-national, collegiate and diverse environment with state-of-the-art laboratory, technology and teaching facilities.
Professor Robbie Waugh, a renowned barley geneticist based at the James Hutton Institute and the University of Dundee, has been appointed Director of International Barley Hub (IBH).
Professor Waugh said, “I’m delighted to take on the challenge of leading IBH. Barley is one of the UK’s most valuable crops and investing in barley research can yield great returns and is likely to have a significant economic impact.”
Dr Davide Bulgarelli from the Division of Plant Sciences has been awarded tenure. Davide’s research explores genetic and molecular mechanisms underpinning plant-microbe interactions. In particular, his lab focuses on understanding how microbial communities thriving at the root soil interface, the plant microbiome, are assembled and their contribution for sustainable crop production.
The productivity of cereal crops could get a boost in the future thanks to the discovery of new roles for a master gene regulator that influences the development of barley florets, furthering the understanding of grain development including impacts on grain shape and yield.
A new study from the University of Dundee and the James Hutton Institute, working with partners in the UK and Australia, has shown that a gene encoding a protein called HvAPETALA2 (HvAP2) has a role in the development of florets and grain.
