Gurpinder Singh Sidhu

Project Title: When crops grow up – determining the regulatory control of developmental transitions in Brassicas

Supervisor Prof Richard Morris

I was born and brought up in Punjab – an agriculturally important region in India. Growing up amongst farms, I naturally was very interested in plant science. I pursued my undergraduate degree from Punjab Agricultural University in Plant Biotechnology. Alongside my formal degree, I also had a deep interest in mathematics and subsequently, computer sciences. This meant that at the end of my university degree, I had two contrasting set of skills that I wanted to somehow combine.

I had been aware of John Innes Centre and wider Norwich Research Park Institutes because of their high-quality research. During the 3rd year of my undergraduate degree, I applied and was selected to be part of the International Undergraduate Summer School, where I worked in Richard Morris’ lab learning how computational techniques are applied to understand plant systems. By the end of it, I knew this would be the best place in the world to do a PhD in the interdisciplinary field of computational biology.

I applied for the NRPDTP PhD programme because it provides excellent opportunities for research, networking with other researchers and a chance to do a PIPS placement – which provides a unique experience in addition to the research and is highly recommended!