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Lab manager

Robin Pottie graduated in 2017 as Bachelor in Biomedical Laboratory Technology at Odisee Technologycampus Gent. During his bachelor, he worked on a project for Dr. Simon Stael developing genetic and chemical tools to alter the calcium flux in chloroplasts. Afterwards he joined the Van Breusegem lab as a technician and later as lab manager. His main objectives are the support of the lab in general logistics, knowledge transfer, high throughput screens and proof of concept experiments.

In 2019, I obtained a Master in Biology at Ghent University. Since then, I have been working on the relationship between the TOR/SnRK1 regulatory hub and nitrogen signaling.

Laurens Pauwels is leading the Crop Genome Engineering Facility at VIB. Their mission is to make gene editing in crops more accessible for researchers.

His career started with a  PhD in the Alain Goossens lab at VIB-UGent, where he used protein-protein interaction mapping and reverse genetics to unravel jasmonate transcriptional regulation in Arabidopsis. After a stay at UC Davis with Judy Callis working on protein ubiquitination and degradation, he returned to the Goossens lab to continue this research line, and set up CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing in the lab for yeast, Arabidopsis and tomato. In 2017, he started the Crop Genome Engineering Facility.

The research in the Pauwels lab currently focuses on improving methods for CRISPR delivery and plant regeneration within maize and soybean. Other projects include engineering of Agrobacterium tumefaciens, combining haploid induction and genome editing, gene editing of other species such as wheat and sorghum.