People

Our group was established in January 2022. We are affiliated to the Organismal and Evolutionary Biology Research Programme (OEB) and we are also part of the Centre of Excellence in Tree Biology (TreeBio).
Anne Vatén

Anne studied Biology at University of Eastern Finland before joining Prof. Ykä Helariutta’s research group (University of Helsinki) as PhD student. There, she studied symplastic signaling regulated vascular development. Anne then joined to Prof. Dominique Bergmann’s research group at Stanford University (USA) as a postdoctoral fellow funded by EMBO LTF. Anne studied regulation of asymmetric stomatal lineage divisions and cell fate transitions. Her group studies mechanisms fine-tuning stomatal numbers during leaf development and aims to compare these mechanisms between angiosperms and gymnosperms.

Kaotar Elhazzime

Kaotar Elhazzime is particularly interested in the molecular regulatory networks governing the development and morphogenesis of biological structures. After pursuing her undergraduate studies on Pant Biology at the university of cadi Ayyad in Morocco, she interned with Genomics and Biotechnology of the Fruit Laboratory in France, conducting research on fruit-set regulation and development in Tomato plants. Currently, she is pursuing her doctoral research at Dr. Anne Vaten's research group, her work focuses on Arabidopsis early stomatal lineage progression, aiming to decipher how stomatal development is regulated upon environmental changes.

Sara Forlani

Sara attended the faculty of Biotechnology at the University of Milan (Milan, Italy). Then, she did her PhD in Environmental Sciences, in the laboratory of Prof. Simona Masiero (University of Milan). There, she deepened the role of NAC transcription factors in the regulation of leaf and fruit senescence in the model species Arabidopsis thaliana and Solanum lycopersicum. She is currently working as a postdoc in the laboratory of Dr. Anne Vaten (University of Helsinki, Finland), focusing on the regulation of stomatal lineage during leaf development in response to environmental changes. She is interested in developmental processes as adaptive answer to a constantly changing environment.

Miki Iida

Miki studied Biology at Osaka University, Japan. There, she studied vascular development in Arabidopsis thaliana. She studies to characterize stomatal development in Norway spruce needle in terms of morphological and molecular level.