Dr. Andrea Vega Contreras is currently Assistant Professor at Engineering and Science Faculty, Adolfo Ibañez University (UAI). She is a graduated of Agronomy at the Faculty of Agronomic and Forestry Engineer, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) in 2001. She continued her academic career doing a doctoral degree in Biological Sciences – Molecular Biology and Microbiology at PUC’s Faculty of Biological Science. In 2011-2018, she was hired as Assistant Professor by the Faculty of Agronomic and Forestry Engineer (PUC), where she successfully led projects related to genetics and genomics in agronomic plants. Since joining UAI in 2022, Dr. Vega’s lab has initiated genomic, and systems biology approaches in Tomato and other plant species to study gene regulatory networks underlying plant-pathogens interactions.
Her research seeks to understand, in the long run, how changing environmental conditions such as nutrient availability affect plant development and its ability to face biological stress conditions. One of the leading research areas is the study of environmental cues and how genes and their interactions with environmental signals modulate the outcome of plant-pathogen interactions. For this purpose, she uses genomic data, system biology tools, and classic molecular approximations employing Botrytis cinerea and Solanum lycopersicum as a working model.
TEAM
De izquierda a derecha: Camila Huidobro (PhD student), Alejandro Altamira (Post-doc y lab manager), Andrea Vega Contreras (Researcher), Mario Agurto (Post-doc), Raúl Hinostroza (Undergraduate student)