Doctoral student Ching-Jung Lin of the laboratory of nematologist Shahid Siddique, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is the recipient of a  two-year, $32,000 Ministry of Education Taiwan Government Scholarship to Study Abroad (GSSA).

The scholarships are awarded to young Taiwanese doctoral students in various fields to support their research.

Lin enrolled in the UC Davis plant pathology doctoral program, with a designated emphasis in biotechnology,  in 2020. In the Siddique lab, she is working on nematode transformation and nematode-induced plant immunity.

Lin  received her bachelor's degree in agronomy in 2015 from the National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan, and her master's degree in plant biology in 2018 from National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.  Her master's research, in the lab of Chiu-Ping Cheng, involved the study of tomato innate immunity mediated by bacterial-wilt-associated QTL (quantitative trait locus) genes. Before joining the Siddique lab, she was a research assistant in the lab of Erh-Min Lai of Academic Sinica, where she studied  Agrobacterium-triggered immunity in Arabidopsis. 

“I am fascinated by plant-microbe interaction,” Lin says.  ‘Currently I am interested in the development of functional genetic tools in plant-parasitic nematodes and the characterization of nematode-induced plant immunity. 

A frequent presenter at conferences, Lin presented her research at the 2023 Bay Area Worm meeting at UC Davis; the 2019 International Society for Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions (IS-MPMI)  Congress in Glasgow, and at several Taiwanese conferences. She will compete in a 12-minute presentation competition at the 62nd annual Society of Nematologists' meeting, to be held July 9-14 at The Ohio State University, Columbus. She received a $600 Bayer Crop Science Student Travel Award to attend the conference.

Lin also presented at the 2019 at International Society for Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions (IS-MPMI)  Congress in Glasgow, and at several Taiwanese conferences.

Plant-parasitic nematodes are destructive pests causing losses of billions of dollars annually. Siddique says the research in his lab “focuses on elucidating interactions between plant parasitic nematodes and their hosts using molecular and applied methodologies.”