Principal Investigator · General Manager
Dr Esra Mine Ünal is Principal Investigator and General Manager of AgriGenomics Hub. She conducts molecular ecology and evolutionary genetics research at eGL and AgriGX and contributes to team management, project development, sequencing applications and bioinformatics workflow design.
Following undergraduate and master’s studies in fisheries, she completed a PhD in biotechnology. Her doctoral research developed next-generation sequencing applications for biomonitoring, a local reference database and a bioinformatics pipeline.
Her work covers invasive and rare species, eDNA metabarcoding, food species authentication, bioinvasion risks associated with ballast water and archaeological microbial communities. She has experience in DNA/RNA isolation, library preparation, quality control, gene expression and population genetics.
She has undertaken postdoctoral research in Brazil and Norway and delivered training in molecular genetics and environmental genomics to academic and private-sector teams.