Rebecca Vandeleur

Biography

Rebecca graduated with BAgSc(Honours) in 1996 from University of Adelaide. She spent 1997 working on a dairy farm in Denmark and travelling throughout Europe. From 1998-2003 Rebecca worked as a Research Officer in the Department of Agronomy at the Roseworthy Campus of University of Adelaide.  She worked on a project to identify traits and wheat cultivars associated with improved competitiveness against weeds.  A number of quantitative trait loci associated with competitiveness were identified as were a number of wheat lines that were later utilised for breeding more competitive wheat cultivars.  This work was done in collaboration with Greg Rebetzke at CSIRO Plant Industry, Canberra.

In 2003 Rebecca commenced her PhD with Professor Steve Tyerman at the Waite Campus, University of Adelaide.  Her PhD examined Grapevine Root Hydraulics: the role of aquaporins. After obtaining PhD in 2008 Rebecca continued working for Steve Tyerman as a Post-Doctoral Fellow exploring the role of shoot-to-root signals in regulating root hydraulic conductivity and aquaporin activity.  She also spent two years working with Brent Kaiser examining the interaction between nitrogen nutrition and root hydraulic conductivity of maize.

In July 2014 Rebecca became the Operations and Research Manager at the Adelaide node of the COE PEB.  This involves ensuring compliance with quarantine and OGTR regulations; finance and budgets; assisting with laboratory management; and training of staff and students, in particular in the use of the Hydraulic Conductance Flow Meter and cell pressure probe which she used extensively as a researcher.