rdgMendes' Lab

PhD Rodrigo Mendes

Head of Research and Development Department at Embrapa Environment

Recent Award:

FAPESP Young Investigator Grant (2012-2016)

Award Frederico de Menezes Veiga 2015 (Young Researcher)

Award Trofeu Fumagalli 2018 (Science)

Research Productivity Award Since 2016 (CNPq - Level 2)

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Rodrigo Mendes is the Head of Research and Development Department at Embrapa Environment, where also works as a researcher at the Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology. He is also a lecturer and doctorate supervisor at Agricultural Microbiology Graduate School of University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He graduated as agronomist from the University of Sao Paulo in 2002 with specialization in Biotechnology, where developed his first research on interactions between microbial communities and plants (FAPESP grant). From 2003 to 2008 conducted his PhD (CNPq and FAPESP grants) at the Department of Genetics of University of Sao Paulo, which included 13 months as a guest researcher (CAPES grant) at the Laboratory of Phytopathology of Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Between January 2008 and April 2009 worked as a researcher at CanaVialis/Monsanto on the sugarcane breeding program and from April 2009 to November 2010 worked as an Associate Researcher (Postdoctoral Fellow - NWO grant) at the Bacterial Ecology and Genomics group of Laboratory of Phytopathology, Wageningen University. He was a visiting scientist at Lausanne University, Switzerland, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, USA, at the Rothamsted Research, UK, and a visiting professor at the Isaac Newton Institute, University of Cambridge, UK.

 

Dr. Mendes is the executive secretary of the international research program "Back to the Roots" and his research focuses on interactions between complex microbial communities and their hosts in order to understand how microbiomes support and sustain life of higher organisms. In 2011 he published a breakthrough study, in the Science journal, revealing how bacterial communities naturally defend plants against soil-borne pathogen infections. Currently his projects are focusing on the rhizosphere ecosystem in collaboration with several international research groups.