Timothy has a keen interest in space and biology. After having worked as a student in the Research and Development department of Colruyt Group on Vertical farming technology and hydroponics, his ambition to get further into academics grew. In 2020, he graduated as Master of Science in Biology at Ghent University. Following his master thesis, which focused on the a growth-promoting cytochrome P450 78A, he obtained an FWO-grant for a project that builds further on the same topic. His project focuses on unraveling the reaction catalyzed by CYP78A and clarifying its regulatory network, with the aim to acquire knowledge that can lead to the development of applications with beneficial effects on many agricultural crops in a non-GMO manner (e.g. a biostimulant). The project will function as a stepping stone for his future goals, which involve conducting biological research in the context of space.

Matilde Sanches graduated in 2017 as master of Biodiversity and Plant Biotechnology at University of Coimbra, Portugal. During her master thesis, under the guidance of Prof. Jorge Canhoto, she studied developmental epigenetics throughout somatic embryogenesis of tamarillo plant (Solanum betaceum, Cav.), performing experiments and developing skills (particularly immunofluorescence microscopy) at Pilar S. Testillano's lab in CIB-CSIC, Madrid, Spain. After a one-year experience as Project Developer - DIVA project (H2020) and SKAN Platform activities - at INOVISA (Lisbon, Portugal) and at the Centre for Investigation and Transference of Technology to Community Development (CITT - Maputo, Mozambique), she enrolled in the Plants for Life Doctoral Program in 2019, from ITQB NOVA (Lisbon, Portugal). During her PhD project, focussing on the study of quantitative genetics and mechanisms behind water stress tolerance in grass pea (Lathyrus sativus), she had the opportunity to foster a collaboration between Dr. Carlota Vaz Patto's lab (PlantX group, ITQB NOVA, Oeiras, Portugal) and Prof. Frank Van Breusegem'lab (Oxidative Stress Signalling group, PSB-VIB, Ghent, Belgium). Her main scientific interests are I&D in the agronomic sector, particularly stress resilience in plants, the genetics and epigenetics underlying it; and more important, the potential applications of that field of knowledge in crop improvement and breeding programs, with a particular fondness for orphan crops. More recent (but obviously related) passions are statistics, experimental design and data science, and it was in that framework that she recently joint Hilde Nelissen's Systems Biology of Yield group at PSV-VIB (Ghent, Belgium).

I obtained my master’s degree in Biochemistry and Biotechnology at the Ghent University in 2021. During my thesis I worked in the Pauwels lab on the combination of doubled haploid breeding and multiplex gene editing in maize. Later that year, I joined the group of Dirk Inzé and Hilde Nelissen where I worked on the BREEDIT ERC project, with a focus on genotype-phenotype correlation in multiplex edited maize lines. In 2022, I obtained an FWO PhD fellowship and joined the Pauwels lab again. The main focus of my PhD is to improve regeneration in maize with the goal to expand the number of transformable maize inbred lines, while also developing gene editing strategies.