Dr Dilu Nagahatenna

Dilrukshi is a plant molecular biologist with research expertise in abiotic and biotic stress signaling, genetic transformation and gene editing. She has worked on a broad range of economically important crop species such as barley, cowpea, grapevine and medicinal plants. Dilrukshi completed her PhD at the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG), the University of Adelaide in 2015. Soon after completing her PhD, she joined CSIRO, Adelaide and worked on a Bill and Melinda Gates foundation-funded international collaborative project, which aimed at developing self-reproducible cowpea hybrids through reproductive cell-specific gene editing and silencing. Currently, her research is focused on discovering physiological and molecular mechanisms leading to improved water use efficiency and drought tolerance in grapevine. In addition, her other research interests focus on understanding the etiology of highly devastating Shiraz disease in Australian vineyards through next-generation sequencing.