Deepika Chauhan

Biography

Deepika Chauhan is a plant biotechnologist with specialization in tissue culture and genetic transformation of plant species, namely: cassava, Eucalyptus, Populus, Punica, Robinia and Terminilia. Her interest lies in developing cutting edge tools for improvement of economically important, as well as endangered, plant species. She earned her B.Sc. in Basic Sciences (2003) from St. Bedes College, Shimla, India and her M.Sc. (2005) and Ph.D. (2009, gold medalist) from the University of Horticulture and Forestry, Solan, India. Following her Ph.D., she was awarded a University of Pretoria Postdoctoral Fellowship for International Students. She joined the Forest Molecular Genetics Programme at FABI, University of Pretoria, South Africa for her postdoc from 2009 to 2011. Deepika joined the Danforth Center in October 2011 and has been working on improving the cassava transformation system and understanding the critical factors essential for genetic modification of farmer preferred cassava cultivars. She currently manages the cassava tissue culture and transformation activities for VIRCA, BioCassava Plus and HT Cassava and supervises the technical and research staff working on these projects.

Research Interest

Her postdoctoral research focused on the development of a tissue culture and transformation protocol for commercially grown Eucalyptus tree species and the functional genetic analysis of transcription factors related to cellulose biosynthesis in secondary cell walls of wood fiber in Eucalyptus and Populus genotypes. During her time at the University of Pretoria, she mentored undergraduate students in the Department of Genetics and trained graduate students on eucalypts/poplar plant tissue culture and transformation techniques.