Congratulations to Tiffany Wong for a Successful Dissertation Defense

August 24, 2021 – Please join us in congratulating Tiffany Wong for successfully defending her dissertation, “Investigation Into the Role of UVR8 in Balancing Growth and Acclimation to UV-B Radiation in Natural and Transgenic Populus Variants,” on July 30, 2021.  Wong has completed her course of study in the University of Maryland’s Plant Science and Landscape Architecture Program and fulfilled all of the requirements for the doctoral degree.  Her dissertation advisors were IBBR Fellow Edward Eisenstein (Associate Professor, Fischell Department of Bioengineering) and Joseph Sullivan (Professor and Associate Dean, Plant Science & Landscape Architecture). 

“It has been a pleasure to see Tiffany grow and mature as an independent scientist,” said Eisenstein.  “Her dissertation work was collaborative and multidisciplinary, combining plant biology and ecological physiology, with bioinformatics, metabolomics, gene editing and transgenic plant construction.  Tiffany obtained some surprising, and important results on how the major photoreceptor for UV light not only regulates acclimation and tolerance of plants to radiation, but also how it controls factors that affect the growth and development of plants, which promise significant practical implications.”

“The collaboration with different labs at IBBR and College Park was tremendously helpful in developing my research objectives,” said Wong.  “I am grateful for my graduate experience at UMD and I feel that my advisors (Edward Eisenstein – BIOE and Joseph Sullivan - PSLA) have helped set me up for success as I move forward with postdoctoral research.”

We look forward to following Dr. Wong’s continuing contributions to the field over the coming years.