Sonia obtained her PhD in Biochemistry and Biotechnology in 2022 in the group of Prof. Anne Willems (Laboratory of Microbiology, University of Gent) and Prof. Sofie Goormachtig (VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology). During her PhD, she studied the effect of low temperatures on the microbiome of two cold tolerant plants, Valerianella locusta and Poa annua, and the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. The aim was to identify bacteria able to alleviate cold stress in plants. She is now a postdoctoral scientist in the group of Prof. Sofie Goormachtig at VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology since 2023. As a part of the BOOSTER project, she investigates how drought shapes maize microbiomes to identify drought-enriched bacteria that might promote plant growth under this abiotic stress and understand their mode of action.

Božena obtained her PhD in the Laboratory of Pollen at the Czech Academy of Sciences in 2024, where she employed multi-omic approaches to investigate gene expression dynamics during pollen development. She also worked on functional characterisation of conserved cytoplasmic chaperones that play a key role in plant development and stress response in Arabidopsis and Marchantia polymorpha. In September 2024, Božena joined the Functional Phosphoproteomics group at VIB. Her current research focuses on uncovering common mechanisms underlying heat and cold thermotolerance responses in Arabidopsis and Soybean. She aims to identify key sensor elements that trigger these response pathways using both phosphoproteomics and functional studies.