Dr. Astrid Junker is a biologist and leads the research and infrastructure group ‘Acclimation Dynamics and Phenotyping’ at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Gatersleben, Germany. She is responsible for management and coordination of IPKs high throughput plant phenotyping facilities.
Her current research focusses on the elucidation of mechanisms underlying acclimation processes of model and crop plants in response to fluctuating environmental conditions and the identification of mechanisms underlying acclimation through machine-learning-based multi-omics approaches. She has a strong methodological focus on automated high throughput plant phenotyping systems which have been set up, extended and extensively used under her supervision.
Throughout her scientific career Astrid Junker has also developed a strong background in complementary research fields such as plant molecular biology (PhD on functional analysis of Arabidopsis transcription factor genes), bioinformatics (PostDoc on network analyses and visualization, integrated omics data analyses, metabolic modeling) and research data management (standardized and sustainable documentation and publication of data and metadata according to FAIR principles).
