Principal Investigator

Mark Tester
  • Professor, Plant Science;
  • Chair, Center of Excellence for Sustainable Food Security
  • Director (Interim), KAUST’s Food Mission

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance, Ion transport, Crop science, Plant physiology

Research Scientists

Yveline Pailles

Research Scientist

Research Interests: Plant genetics, Plant physiology, Molecular biology, Crop improvement, Salinity tolerance in tomato plants, Wild relatives of tomato, Galapagos tomatoes

PhD Students

Dayana Tleubayeva

PhD Student

Hafiz Farooq

PhD Student

Lina Ceceres Leal

PhD Student

Yao Tian

PhD Student

Yunchuan Wang

PhD Student

Research Group Staff

Bhagya Girjia

Lab Support Technician

Gabriele Fiene

Research Specialist

Hanna Cherviakouskaya

Research Specialist

Nikoleta Kocakova

Project Coordinator

Noha O. Saber

Lab Technician

Oleksandr Bershadskyi

Lab/Field Technician

Arne Scheu

Ms Student

Bo Li

Postdoctoral Fellow​

Research Interests: Bioinformatics, Anion Transport, Plant molecular biology

Clara Stanschewski

Ph.D. Student

Research Interests: Plant genetics, Plant Phenotyping, Genome-Wide Association studies, Genotype x environment interactions, Plant domestication, Climate change

Damien Lightfoot

Research Scientist​​

Research Interests: Plant molecular biology, Bioinformatics, Plant physiology, Genomics

David Jarvis

Post-doctoral fellow ​

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance, Adaptation, Genomics, Biotechnology

Dinara Utarbayeva

Greenhouse Technician

Research Interests: Crossing, grafting tomatoes, germination and propagating coarctata rice

Dongryung Lee

Postdoctoral Fellow

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance

Elodie Rey

Postdoctoral Fellow

Research Interests: Crops, Genomics, Transcriptomic, polyploidy, Domestication, stress resillience

Eunje Kim

Masters Student

Fangfang Wu

Lab Technician

Fouad Lemtiri-Chlieh

Research Scientist

Research Interests: Electrophysiology, Sodium transport, Signal transduction pathways

Ge Gao

PhD Student

Gordon Wellman

Post-Doctoral Fellow

Research Interests: Plant Abiotic stress tolerance, Transcriptomic, Genome sequencing, Salinity, Biotechnology

Hana Kanee

Ms Student

Hongwei Ren

Greenhouse Technician

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance, tomato

Jyoti Dubey

Greenhouse Technician

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance, Applied molecular and cellular biology, Plant molecular biology

Khadija Zemmouri

Greenhouse Technician​

Lijun Li

Greenhouse Technician​

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance

Lila Ali Aldakheel

Greenhouse Technician

Magdalena Julkowska

Research Scientist

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance, Root architecture, Plant Architecture, High throughput phenotyping

Mashael D. Alqahtani

PhD Student

Research Interests: Plant physiology, Genetic engineering, Molecular biology

Mitchell Morton

PhD Student

Research Interests: Plant physiology, Salinity tolerance, Plant genetics, Molecular biology, Crop improvement, Salinity tolerance in tomato plants, Wild relatives of tomato, Galapagos tomatoes

Moonsun Hwang

Postdoctoral Fellow

Research Interests: Molecular biology, Biochemistry

Nadia Al-Tamimi

PhD Student

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance, Molecular biology, Plant genomics

Nathaly Ortiz

Ph.D. Student

Research Interests: Grafting, salinity tolerance, tomatoes, polyploids

Nouf Alshareef

Research Interests: Abiotic Stress, Salt Stress, Heat Stress, Transcription Factors, Gene Regulatory Network

Octavio Salazar

​Postdoctoral Fellow

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance, Halophytes, Tissue Tolerance, Saponins

Rameesha M. Parambil

​Lab Technician at the Salt Lab

Rita Bartossek

Research Scientist

Research Interests: Biotechnology, metagenomics as tool for analysis of novel enzymes of complex communities, microbial ecology, comparative genomics, next generation sequencing, adaptation to extreme environments in plants

Ryan Lefers

Agriculture Engineer

Research Interests: Food/water/energy nexus, controlled environment agriculture, saltwater-based agriculture, aquaponics, horticulture lighting, circular agriculture systems

Sandra Schmöckel

​Postdoctoral Fellow

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance, Ion transport, Crop science, Barley, Plant Science

Shawkat Ali

Postdoctoral Fellow

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance, Signalling, Genetic engineering

Shireen Hammoud

Lab Technician

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance

Sonia Negrao

Research Scientist

Sundus Bukhari

Lab Technician

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance

Vanessa Melino

Research Scientist

Research Interests: Plant physiology, Plant nutrition, Salinity tolerance, Root architecture, Ion transport

Yong Woo

Research Scientist

Yung Shwen Ho

Research Scientist

Research Interests: Plant genomics, Bioinformatics, Big Data Visualization, Computational Biology