Ilonka Engelhardt

TRAYECTORIA

I graduated as a Biomedical Technologist from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in 2008, following which I worked until 2011 in a diagnostic microbiology laboratory at Groote Schuur hospital (South Africa). In 2012 I continued my studies by completing first a Master´s degree at the University of Aberdeen (UK) in Environmental Microbiology and then a PhD at INRAE and the University of Burgundy in Dijon (France). During my PhD I focused on the effect of drying and rewetting on plant-microbial interactions and nutrient fluxes (C and N), using among others, DNA and total RNA sequencing, stable isotope probing and stable isotope tracers. After completing of my PhD in May 2018, I started working as a post-doc researcher at the James Hutton Institute in Dundee (UK), where I focus on characterising microbial interactions with and colonisation of plant roots using a combination of confocal and light sheet microscopy and image analysis.