Dr Ikram Blilou
Dr Ikram Blilou is a Professor leading the Plant Cell and Developmental Biology laboratory within the division of Biological Environmental Science and Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. 

Her PhD studies, at the University of Granada in Spain, focused on molecular mechanisms in plant defense during early responses to symbiotic mycorrhiza. After graduating, she moved to the Netherlands for postdoctoral research at Utrecht University, where she studied cell-cycle regulation and polar auxin transport. After completing her postdoctoral work, she was appointed as an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics at Utrecht University in 2003, where she established a line of research focusing on mechanisms regulating protein movement in plant roots. In 2006, she was awarded the prestigious Dutch VIDI and Aspasia grant and was promoted to the rank of associate professor. In 2012, she moved along with her department to Wageningen University where she continued studying root development in Arabidopsis.  In 2017, she moved to KAUST where she is currently leading several research projects including desert adaptations focusing on date palms and other desert species. Her team uses multidisciplinary approaches, including high-resolution microscopy, tissue culture and plant transformation, genome editing technologies, and transcriptional assays. The team also implements deep learning and computer vision to analyze and quantify dynamic processes in vivo ranging from protein associations to pathogen invasion, disease detection, and growth quantification.