Charles J. Underwood

Charlie comes from the UK. He did his undergraduate degree in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry at the University of Oxford. In 2011 he moved to New York for his PhD at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory where he worked with Prof. Rob Martienssen on the epigenetic control of plant genomes. During his PhD he extensively collaborated with Prof. Ian Henderson at the University of Cambridge, focusing on the genetic and epigenetic control of meiotic recombination. In 2016, he moved to the Netherlands where he worked as a Postdoc at KeyGene. There he unravelled the molecular genetic basis of apomixis in the common dandelion and collaborated with several international seed companies to expedite breeding through the application of plant reproduction technologies. Since September 2019 Charlie has led a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany.