Senior Scientist
Plenty
Laramie, Wyoming
Sofia Carvalho has a background in Biological Engineering from Instituto Superior Tecnico and a PhD in Molecular Biology from Nova University Lisbon, Portugal. She performed her graduate work at Gulbenkian Science Institute and looked at the role of alternative splicing in plants under abiotic stress using Arabidopsis as a model. At the University of Giessen, Germany, she acquired training on photobiology. As a postdoc she worked with Dr Kevin Folta at the University of Florida and manipulated light and genetics for crop improvement, from leafy greens to fruit crops. She was then a professor in Ecuador where she continued applying photobiology to enhance local crops, such as quinoa and guayusa, while teaching undergraduate and graduate courses related to biotechnology. She joined Plenty in 2022 as a Senior Scientist in Photobiology to support the company work towards achieving high yield and quality in various crops, including strawberry, leafy greens and tomato.