Sundar Kalaipandian

Dr Sundar Kalaipandian obtained his BSc (Agriculture) and MSc (Plant Breeding and Genetics) from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India. He worked as a senior research fellows at Sugarcane Breeding Institute in India. He then went to undertake his PhD in Biotechnology at Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He received a postdoctoral fellowship from Academia Sinica. He got a postdoctoral position to work at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and moved to Australia. He worked for University of Adelaide and Biosecurity Queensland. Then, he joined as a research fellow at the University of Queensland. Currently, he received an Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowship project to develop a commercial tissue culture protocol on date plam.

Sundar has developed expertise in genetics, plant breeding, biotechnology, genomics, and bioinformatics during his career. He has specialized in the development of abiotic and biotic stress tolerant varieties. He has worked on several plant species including sugarcane, rice, maize, Arabidopsis, wheat, coconut, date palm, Australian native plant species and weeds. He has experience in developing strong collaborations with national and international organizations, and private industries. He is interested in commercialization of scientific technologies for farmers and bringing various technologies to field. He is also interested to work on Australian native plant species and environmental factors that affect their germination and growth. Apart from scientific skills, he is taking various roles in preparation of collaborative agreements, biosecurity documents, project and budget management activities.