Peng received his Master’s degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Sun Yat-sen University in 2013, studying chloroplast and plastid division under Prof. Hongbin Wang. He later worked at the Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology with Dr. Mingguang Lei on the endocytic mechanisms of phosphate transporters. In 2019, he began his PhD with Dr. Jenny Russinova, focusing on endocytic regulation in Arabidopsis, supported by a CSC scholarship. He started his postdoctoral research in Thomas Jacobs’ lab in July 2025, working on genome-wide screening in Physcomitrium patens.

Jenny Russinova has studied Biotechnology in Sofia University, St. Kliment Ohridski and obtained her PhD at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. Subsequently, she performed postdoctoral studies at Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands in the lab of Sacco de Vries, where she worked on understanding the function, mechanisms of activation and the subcellular compartmentalization of plant receptor-like kinases called SERKs. In 2006, she started her own research group focusing on brassinosteroid signaling regulation in plants.
 

Naomi obtained her master’s degree in Biochemistry and Biotechnology from Ghent University in 2020. For her master’s thesis she performed an Erasmus exchange to the Sainsbury lab of Cambridge University (SLCU), where she worked on the role MtLSH1 and MtNOOT1/2 during early nodule organogenesis in Medicago truncatula within the group of Prof. Dr. Giles Oldroyd. Currently, Naomi is performing her PhD research (FWO-SB fellowship) at the Rhizosphere group of Prof. Dr. Sofie Goormachtig, this time shifting her focus to another symbiont: arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). During her PhD, Naomi uses diverse single cell and -nuclei transcriptomics and proteomics approaches to obtain a better understanding of the immunity-related crosstalk occurring during the tomato-AMF symbiotic interaction.