Congratulations to Tanya Welgemoed who presented her PhD prestige seminar on “Comparative genomics of diverse African isolates of Cercospora zeina”. A serious factor hampering global maize production in sub-Saharan Africa is grey leaf spot disease, caused by the fungus C. zeina.  In her PhD study, she conducted whole-genome Illumina sequencing, de novo genome assembly and protein annotation on a diverse set of 30 C. zeina isolates from five African countries. Her study used genome-wide SNP markers to explore population differentiation between East and southern African isolates.  She also characterised the pangenome and identified selective sweeps to understand the drivers of regional adaptation.

Tanya is in the MPPI research group and the Centre for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and her PhD study was supervised by Prof. Dave Berger with co-supervisors Prof. Eva Stukenbrock from the Christian-Alberts University of Kiel and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology at Plön, Germany, as well as Prof. Irene Barnes and Prof. Tuan Duong in BGM, and FABI. In addition to computer programming and mastering population genomics software, Tanya is a violinist who has participated in the University of Pretoria symphony orchestra.  We look forward to Tanya’s contributions to the group as a postdoctoral Fellow.