Renaud Bulpa
Renaud graduated in 2022 with Magna cum Laude from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) as a bioengineer in Agricultural Sciences. He then worked as a research assistant on a wheat screening project at UCLouvain before joining a non-profit organisation to help implement field trials on maize. Passionate about research, he decided to pursue a PhD and joined the RootEd doctoral network in 2023 as a doctoral candidate.
The aim of his project is to observe soil exploration by plant roots in compacted soil to deduce the impacts of different plant hormones on this ability to overcome sub-optimum soil conditions. To do so, Renaud will develop new software and techniques for an AI-based approach for the reconstruction of 3D root systems in X-ray CT scans and use these new tools to quantify root exploration of tomato mutants under compacted soil conditions.
Supervisor: Associate Prof. Saoirse Tracy (UCD), Associate Prof. Michael Pound (UoN), Prof. Malcolm Bennett (UoN)