Ayodeji Bello

Southern Piedmont Agricultural Research and Extension Center, School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Track

Research Frontiers

Faculty Mentor

Yuan Zeng
Assistant Professor of Plant Pathology

Briefly describe the research project you are planning to contribute to and lead as a postdoctoral associate at Virginia Tech. What is the problem you are addressing? What is the expected impact of your work?

Here at Virginia Tech, I will be investigating how management practices alter soil core microbiota and their association with crop health and soil borne diseases. A key element of disease management is determining the optimized control measures that are economically feasible and environment-friendly.

The proposed research combines modern high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies and the IoT (internet of thing) enabled soil sensing networks to explore the roles of the core microbiota to standard management practices that correlate to soilborne disease occurrence and severity in soybean, corn, wheat, and tobacco in order to identify the optimized control measures and to develop advanced agricultural forecasting platforms to further prevent plant disease outbreaks.

Why did you choose to pursue postdoctoral training at Virginia Tech?

Virginia Tech's emphasis on both basic and translational research motivated my decision to pursue postdoctoral training at the institution. The opportunity to work within a diverse and dynamic multidisciplinary team at Zeng Lab is truly exciting. I believe that the synergy of perspectives and expertise within such an environment will greatly impact my research experience and adequately prepare me to excel in my career path and to reach my goal of becoming a faculty member.

What are you most looking forward to as you begin in this fellowship at Virginia Tech?

I am looking forward to working with a multidisciplinary team that conducts both basic and translational research. I am excited about the opportunities to collaborate with other laboratories at Virginia Tech and beyond. Simultaneously, I am eager to develop my skills in technologies such as MinION (Nanopore sequencing technology), environmental sensing technologies, and microbiome engineering.