Mingyuan Zhu.

I was born and raised in Jiangsu Province, China, and earned my Bachelor’s degree at Tsinghua University in Beijing. I then joined Dr. Adrienne Roeder’s laboratory at Cornell University, where I studied developmental robustness. My PhD research, which integrated time-lapse confocal imaging with computational modeling, highlighted the crucial role of developmental timing in ensuring robust organ morphogenesis. Following this, I moved to Dr. Philip Benfey’s laboratory at Duke University, where my research focuses on the dynamic interactions between roots and their soil environment. My major project utilizes single-cell and spatial transcriptomic techniques to explore how rice roots respond to various soil conditions. As a plant developmental biologist, I am deeply interested in how organisms adjust their growth in response to environmental changes. I am particularly intrigued by circumnutation, the helical movement of root tips, which aids in root navigation through heterogeneous soil environments.