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Thomas A. DeFalco
Tom is a molecular biologist interested in the mechanisms of plant-environment interactions and cell signaling. He studied plant molecular biology with a focus on calcium signaling at Queen's University (with Wayne Snedden) and received his PhD from University of Toronto (with Keiko Yoshioka). He then pursued postdoctoral work in the lab of Cyril Zipfel as an EMBO and NSERC fellow, where he worked on receptor kinases and the plant immune system. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Western where his lab uses a variety of biochemical, molecular, genetic, and systems approaches to tackle complex aspects of plant receptor signaling.
Background:
Assistant Professor, Western University, London, Canada (since 2022)
Postdoc, University of Zurich, Switzerland (2018-2022)
Postdoc, The Sainsbury Laboratory, Norwich, UK (2017-2018)
PhD, University of Toronto, Canada (2016)
MSc, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada (2010)
Teaching:
Bio 3222G - Molecular Sensing and Signalling in Plants
Bio 4218F - Plant Pathology
Eleanor Khochaba
Eleanor is graduate student who joined the lab in 2023 and is studying the molecular basis of signaling specificity in different RK pathways.
Erica Yip
Erica was an NSERC USRA summer student now doing her honours thesis on identifying and characterizing the kinases and their substrates that function in peptide signaling pathways.
Lorenzo Ford
Lorenzo is a workstudy student who helps with plant growth, lab maintenance, and molecular biology.
Former members
Gregory Wei (NSERC USRA 2023)
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