I’m a doctoral candidate in the University of Auckland’s Joint Graduate School in Plant and Food Science, based at Plant & Food Research.

I’m passionate about understanding microbial evolution and niche adaptation - both in the field and under controlled or experimental settings.

My PhD research focuses on using the kiwifruit pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae to understand how plant pathogens evolve during incursions. I’m examining effector requirements, redundancies, and repertoire refinement across different kiwifruit hosts, using complementary approaches of orchard-based genome biosurveillance and effector knockout strain competition!