Sonia Paoli

Sonia Paoli is a Research Assistant at the Crop Science Centre as part of the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge.

Biography

Sonia Paoli is a plant and molecular biologist specialising in engineering crop resilience and plant-microbe symbiosis. She holds a master’s degree in Systems and Synthetic Biology from Imperial College London, where she modularly transferred immune recognition specificity across NLR frameworks in Nicotiana benthamiana, advancing rational design of plant immune receptors. She has additional research experience in stem cell engineering and metabolic regulation of germline development, with a co-authored manuscript. She is now working with Prof. Uta Paszkowski and Dr. Tom Thirkell as a research assistant on a Novo Nordisk-supported project focused on wheat. Her career aims to develop biologically informed technologies that strengthen agricultural sustainability and soil regeneration.