Dr Victor Soria-Carrasco

Victor is the Head of our Entomology and Insectary Facility, which holds Defra licences for working with exotic species and plant pathogens.

The Entomology team have expert knowledge in the husbandry of non-model invertebrate pests and the design and undertake of a wide range of bioassays, actively supporting research on insect-plant interactons and plant-pathogen-vectors.

Victor aims to expand the capacities of the Entomology Facility by using genomic approaches to assist with the diagnose and tracking of population dynamics of pests and pest-associated plant pathogens, the genetic mapping of relevant invertebrate traits, and the eventual development of new pest and plant pathogen control methods using evolutionary approaches and gene editing tools.

Victor joined us from the University of Sheffield, where he held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and used population genomics approaches to assess the importance of gene flow in evolutionary diversification.

His background is in evolutionary genomics, having studied the changes that take place in the genome during adaptation and speciation processes in non-model insects, as well as the genetic architecture or key adaptive traits.