Dr Helen Fones – Bio for ECPP24
Helen Fones is a plant pathologist based at the University of Exeter. She studied Biological Sciences at the University of Oxford, followed by an MSc in Plant Conservation at the University of Birmingham. She returned to Oxford to carry out DPhil research in the lab of Prof Gail Preston. Helen’s DPhil addressed disease resistance in the zinc hyperaccumulator, Noccaea caerulescens, and ranged from molecular biology to field work. After submitting her thesis and getting married in the same week, she took off for Berlin to study plant defence signalling as a postdoc with Prof Tina Romeis and later moved to Exeter to take up a postdoctoral position with Prof Sarah Gurr. Having been introduced to the wheat pathogenic fungus, Zymoseptoria tritici, Helen was surprised to find that this fungus could – and does – spend days exploring the leaf surface before actually invading and causing disease. She used this surprise as the basis of a UKRI Future Leader’s Fellowship application, in which she now attempts to unravel the hows, whys, and what-does-it-eats that underpin this fungus-plant interaction.
