Fernan Fedrici, Anna Gordon and Lionel Dupuy

Born in 1980 in Mendoza, Argentina, Fernan studied engineering for two years in the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Argentina, before moving to Chile to obtain a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology. He worked for a year in plant biology at UNAM University, Mexico, which introduced him to the fascinating world of botany. Later, he moved to Cambridge under the Gates Foundation Scholarship Program to get a PhD in biological sciences at Jim Haseloff's lab. He is now a postdoc there and is currently working in the field of synthetic biology for a National Science Foundation/Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council-funded project on the 'programmable rhizosphere'. This seeks to engineer artificial communication between plant cells and bacteria.

Anna is a molecular plant pathologist and works at the National Institute for Agricultural Botany (NIAB) in Cambridge on a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council-funded project looking at wheat-Claviceps interactions. "I got into plant sciences while doing my first degree in biochemistry at the University of Leeds and I then did a PhD whilst working at Horticulture Research International, and it was here that I got my taste for plant pathology. I find the interaction of plants with their fungal pathogens really fascinating; how they have both adapted and conditioned the way they live to either avoid confrontation or resist infection leads to these often bizarre and complex interactions, which Fernan is helping me image."

Lionel was born in Champigny-sur-Marne, in the south-eastern suburbs of Paris, where he stayed to complete his undergraduate studies in mathematics. He then obtained an MSc in timber engineering in Nantes. Following this he completed a PhD in plant biomechanics and then worked in Jim Haseloff's lab at the University of Cambridge on the computer modelling of cell growth and morphogenesis. Currently, he is leading the plant systems modelling group at the Scottish Crop Research Institute, developing mathematical approaches to understand the dynamics of plant environment interactions.

To find out more about these images, click on the thumbnails below.