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Team

Core Team

Name   Role Contact info
Dr Rossana Henriques Principal Investigator rossana.henriques@ucc.ie
Dr Catherine Gough Post Doc CTuckerNeeGough@ucc.ie
Grace Maria Hurley PhD student  119489306@umail.ucc.ie
Bianca Govi Research Assistant bianca.govi@ucc.ie

Core Team Profiles

Dr. Rossana Henriques, Principal Investigator

Paddy O'Keeffe Senior Lecturer in Plant Genetics at the School of BEES, UCC. ResilientCrop Project Leader.

Research interests: How circadian-mediated seasonal perception controls plant growth and development. How a changing climate will impact food security in Ireland through investigation of forage crops.

Email: rossana.henriques@ucc.ie

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Dr. Catherine Gough, Postdoctoral researcher

Durham University PhD graduate. Research interests: Plant molecular biology, plant abiotic/biotic stress responses, genomics, transcriptomics, Arabidopsis and crops, food security and agricultural sustainability for the future.

Email: ctuckerneegough@ucc.ie

Grace Hurley, MSc, BSc, PhD Student

MSc Biotechnology and BSc Hons Applied Plant Biology graduate from University College Cork currently pursuing a PhD on the ResilientCrop project with a deep interest in plant science, molecular biology, and the abiotic stress management of agricultural crops in the context of climate change.

Email: 119489306@umail.ucc.ie

Bianca Govi, Research Assistant

BSc in Applied Plant Biology, MRes in Environmental Science at University College Cork.

Collaborators

Name  Affiliation
Prof. Astrid Wingler School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UCC
Dr Stephen Byrne Teagasc, Crops Research Centre, Oak Park,
Dr Andrew Lindsay School of Biochemistry & Cell Biology, UCC
Prof. Marcel Jansen School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UCC
Dr Saoirse Tracy  School of Agriculture and Food Science, UCD
Dr Elodie Ruelle Teagasc, Moorepark

Collaborator Profiles

Prof. Astrid Wingler

Professor of Plant Biology, Head of Plant Science at University College Cork. Her research focuses on plant-environment interactions, especially in the context of climate change. This includes investigating the impacts of climate change on plant growth and survival in natural habitats, agriculture and forestry.

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Dr. Stephen Byrne

Research Officer (Crops, Environment & Land Use Programme) at Teagasc
Research Interests:
Integration of genomics and computational biology in plant breeding.
Integration of molecular and computational biology in entomological research and crop science.

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Dr Andrew Lindsay

Dr Andrew Lindsay is the director of the BSc Genetics degree programme in University College Cork. His research focuses on the study of dysregulated membrane trafficking pathways in drug resistant cancers. His expertise in advanced microscopy techniques will applied to the ResilientCrop project.

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Dr. Saoirse Tracy


Dr. Saoirse Tracy is Assistant Professor at University College Dublin (UCD), in the School of Agriculture and Food Science. She is a soil and plant scientist and her research interest aims to understand the response of roots to the soil physical environment. She applies her skills and experience of X-ray CT, soil science, hydrology, plant biology and image analysis to answer further questions about the rhizosphere. Dr. Tracy’s group research root:soil interactions and beneficial root traits and she is Director of the UCD X-ray CT facility.

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Prof. Marcel Jansen

Prof Marcel Jansen is a plant ecophysiologist in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at University College Cork. Marcel received his training at Wageningen Agricultural University (MSc) and the Weizmann Institute of Science (PhD), and was a postdoctoral researcher at Wye College, Wageningen Agricultural University and the John Innes Centre. Following a lectureship at the University of Antwerp, Marcel Joined UCC in 2003. Marcel’s research focusses on the molecular-physiological mechanisms underlying plant acclimation to hostile conditions, including the accumulation of chemical pollutants from surface waters. Research on the capture of pollutants from wastewater is part of a multidisciplinary circular economy approach.

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Dr Elodie Ruelle

Elodie Ruelle is a Senior Research Officer at Teagasc Moorepark working on climate adaptation, specialising in process-based modelling. Her modelling assesses the impact of weather, soil type, and management on grass growth, nitrogen leaching, and farm self-sufficiency, among other indicators. She leads the national grass growth prediction programme, providing weekly forecasts that inform farmers, advisors, and policymakers. She also heads the adaptation pillar of the Teagasc Climate Centre, coordinating several projects on climate adaptation.

Visiting Students

Name  Role Affiliation
Sacha Fortin Final year BSc placement student University of Toulouse

Visiting Students Profiles

Sacha Fortin

Biological Engineering student at the University of Toulouse with a specialisation in Agronomy.
Sacha dedicated three months to the ResilientCrop project in 2025 where she helped with phenotyping experiments.

Email: fortin.sacha@orange.fr

Resilient Crop Project

Distillery Fields, North Mall, University College Cork, Ireland, T23 N73

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