Group members
Julian established his laboratory in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge in 2001. Since then, nineteen post- doctoral researchers, nineteen PhD students, and five research assistants have been part of the lab. The group is currently seventeen-strong. Read more about them below.
Julian Hibberd
Julian did his PhD with John Farrar and Bob Whitbread at Bangor University. He then moved to post-doctoral positions with Julie Scholes, Paul Quick and Malcolm Press in Sheffield, and then John Gray in Cambridge. He started his own group in Cambridge while holding a BBSRC Sir David Phillips Fellowship. Julian’s interests in plant biology have focussed on various aspects of photosynthesis, but most work relates to the evolution and function of the C4 pathway.
Julian represented the photosynthesis and metabolism community from 2005-2012 on the Plant Section committee of the Society of Experimental Biology, and in 2013 was elected as a European Representative of the International Photosynthesis Society. He has served on numerous BBSRC committees, and from 2012-2022 was an Associate Editor of Plant Physiology. Julian is currently a team leader within both the C4 Rice Project, on the Management Board of the Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University, and is Head of the Plant Sciences Department.
Current members
Post-Doctoral Research Associates
Lei Hua
Lei got his PhD in Crop Genetics and Breeding at China Agricultural University in 2015, during his PhD study, he identified and characterized a domestication gene controlling long and barbed awns from the progenitor of cultivated rice, common wild rice (Oryza rufipogon). Lei joined Hibberd lab in 2016; he is investigating the regulatory mechanisms of cell-specific gene expression in C3 leaves.
Tianshu Sun
Tianshu got her PhD in 2018 at Peking University, where she studied the genetic basis of adaptation to alpine environments in Arabidopsis thaliana populations in Tibet. Later, she worked as a research assistant at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science and focused on population genomics and transcriptomics in crop plants. She joined the Hibberd lab in November 2020 where she is currently investigating the regulation of photosynthesis gene expression variation at intra- and interspecific levels using genomics approaches such as eQTL-mapping and single-cell sequencing.
Caijin Chen
Caijin got her PhD in plant molecular genetics in 2021 in University of Aberdeen, UK, where she worked on genome-wide association mapping of salt tolerance and arsenic accumulation in rice. Caijin joined the Hibberd Lab in September 2021, she will be working to increase chloroplast content of rice bundle sheath cells to resemble more closely the bundle sheath of C4 leaves.
Eftychios Frangedakis
Eftychis did his PhD with Jane Langdale at the University of Oxford, working on plant evo-devo. He joined the Hibberd lab in March 2020. Here he is exploring synthetic biology approaches to increase the chloroplast compartment in Arabidopsis bundle sheath cells.
Patrick Dickinson
Patrick did his PhD with Phil Wigge at the Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University working on how plants sense temperature and how temperature is integrated with other environmental signals to control adaptive responses in Arabidopsis. This work found a role for chloroplast signalling in controlling diurnal patterns of thermotolerance. Since moving across Cambridge to the Hibberd lab in summer 2017, Patrick is working on how cell-type sepcific expression is controlled in Arabidopsis and how large increases in the expression of genes required for C4 photosynthesis have evolved using Arabidopsis and the C4 model species Gynandropsis gynandra.
Kumari Billakurthi
Kumari got her PhD in December 2018 from Heinrich Heine University, Germany. She had performed EMS mutagenesis and activation tagging screens in Arabidopsis thaliana and had analysed comparative transcriptomics of leaf developmental gradients from C3 and C4 Flaveria species to identify novel genes that determine C4 leaf anatomy. She then continued in the same group as a postdoctoral researcher until the end of 2019. In April 2020, she has joined the Hibberd’s group as a research associate to investigate how chloroplasts biogenesis is regulated by cell division patterns in rice (Oryza sativa) bundle sheath cells.
Tina B. Schreier
Tina did her PhD in plant biochemistry at ETH Zurich, and her main research interest lies in plant metabolism and photosynthesis. She joined the lab of Julian Hibberd in October 2018 as a Swiss National Science Foundation Research Fellow, studying cell-to-cell connectivity in leaves of the Cleome family and how this trait might have facilitated the evolution of C4 photosynthesis. During her PhD in the lab of Professor Sam Zeeman, she discovered two chloroplast proteins that were originally thought to act as enzymes play other important non-canonical roles. This includes the plastidial NAD-dependent malate dehydrogenase, where the protein but not the enzymatic activity is required for proper chloroplast development. After her PhD, she worked at the John Innes Centre in the group of Professor Alison Smith, studying transgenic wheat lines with altered carbohydrate metabolism in the grain.
Rohan Richard
Rohan got his PhD at the University of Reading in 2023 where he studied the stability of QTL associated to bread-making quality traits and conducted a QTL analysis on the trait Grain Protein Deviation (GPD) in wheat. He also investigated the senescence dynamic in the mapping population and performed a QTL detection for senescence traits. Since April 2023, he is hosted joinly by the Hibberd and Kromdijk labs where he is finalizing the development of a Cleome gynandra mapping population and carrying out association analysis on C. gynandra photosynthetic traits.
PhD students
Anoop Tripathi
Anoop is Gates Cambridge PhD Scholar working on various aspects of grafting and somatic hybridization. Prior to this, he worked as a Senior Research Technician in the Hibberd lab where he was involved in establishing the method of monocot grafting which overturned the long-standing consensus that monocots cannot graft. Back in India he worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (ICAR-NBPGR), New Delhi, where his research focused on understanding the gene regulatory networks in cereal crops. He has a Masters in Biochemistry from the University of Lucknow, India.
Masters Students
Becca Testa
Becca completed her undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, specialising in Plant Sciences in her final year and graduating in June 2022. She joined the Hibberd lab in September 2022 as an MPhil student, where she is currently investigating chloroplast positioning in bundle sheath cells of C4 plant Gynandropsis gynandra.
Zara Guppy
Zara did her undergrad at the University of Cambridge, specialising in plant sciences, before starting her masters in the Hibberd lab in October 2022. Here she is looking at understanding the regulation of bundle sheath specific genes in C3 Arabidopsis and developing a cell-specific reporter for promoter studies based on the betalain synthesis pathway.
Research staff
Susan Stanley
Susan is in charge of keeping the lab running! She has been instrumental in developing the transformation pipeline that we use for Gynandropsis gynandra. She is also responsible for plant and seed stock maintenance, ordering lab stocks, and time permiting, helps with specific research projects in the lab. She joined the lab in 2000 after having worked in Industry.
Na Wang
Na did her MSc in Plant Genetics and Breeding at CAU (China Agricultural University), then she went to Biotech center of Beijing Da Bei Nong Technology Group Co. Ltd., she got 5 year rich experience of cereal genetic transformation there. She joined the Hibberd lab in 2017 as a research technician.
Ruth Donald
Ruth has a PhD in Plant Biochemistry from the University of Warwick where she studied the targeting of chloroplast proteins into the thylakoid membrane and found that multiple pathways exist. She then went to a postdoctoral post at the University of Auckland, before coming to Plant Sciences Cambridge work on the import, assembly and turn-over of chloroplast proteins in John Gray’s lab, and then as a Royal Society Research Fellow. Since then she has worked at Biogemma on useful oil production in oilseed rape and screening of wheat cultivars for marker-gene trait associations, and has also worked for Syngene. She returned to Plant Sciences in May 2017, joining the Hibberd lab to work on crop transformation.
Alexandros Fragkidis
Alexandros completed his undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Leeds in June 2023. In his final year project, he identified proteins part of repressive complexes in Arabidopsis. He joined Hibberd lab as a lab technician in August 2023 and his main interest will be the optimisation of date palm grafting.