Biosketch D. Van Der Straeten (ORCID 0000-0002-7755-1420, Researcher ID E-7385-2016) Dominique Van Der Straeten (MSc in Bioscience Engineering (major Chemistry), MSc in Biology (major Plant Sciences)) is a senior full professor at Ghent University, and research director of the Laboratory of Functional Plant Biology. Prior to becoming tenured staff at Ghent University, she was affiliated to the Belgian National Science Foundation for 16 years (from Research Assistant to Research Director). With a fellowship of the British Council, she conducted pre-doctoral research at the University of Reading (UK), under supervision of Prof. J.B. Harborne. She was awarded a PhD fellowship from the National Science Foundation to start her doctoral thesis (on the key step in ethylene biosynthesis in plants) at the Department of Genetics, Harvard University (Boston, USA) under the guidance of Prof. H.M. Goodman, continued at Ghent University in the laboratory of Prof. M. Van Montagu. After her PhD defense, she was elected Laureate of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Literature and Fine Arts, Belgium, and awarded the prize of the Soenen Foundation. She launched a research group during her PhD, on ethylene biosynthesis in plants, and later expanded the topic to cross-talk of ethylene with other plant hormones and light signaling. In the past few years, the focus of this part of her research shifted to the metabolism of the ethylene precursor ACC, its transport and its signaling pathway, as well as to identification of core stress response genes in plants, and novel inhibitors of the ethylene pathway. Shortly before earning her PhD degree, she initiated research on remote imaging of plant stress, demonstrating the pre-symptomatic visualization of plant infection and nutrition stress, more than a decade before the start of the era of plant phenotyping platforms. In this context, she conducted a brief post-doctoral stay at the University of Utrecht (NL), with Prof. H. Lambers. Alongside the other projects, she initiated research on micronutrient biology and crop biofortification in 2003. She worked on B-vitamin enhancement in rice and potato, on the influence of global climate change on micronutrient accumulation in wheat, and now focuses on vitamin and mineral multi-biofortification of rice and potato combined with stress resilience. Her work is internationally recognized. Her publications were cited over 27980 times (H-index 93) in Google Scholar; over 19990 times (H-index 82) in Clarivate Web-of-Science, All databases. She always was enjoying teaching alongside research. Teaching load since 1992: as a course responsible, 1 to 6 courses (up to 500 students/year). PhD guidance: 29 PhD students have completed and defended their thesis, one defense is planned in June 2026, others are ongoing. From 2004–2015 she was responsible for internationalization for Biochemistry and Biotechnology students at Ghent University. She was chairing the Department of Physiology in 2009-2016, was a deputy and elected member of the Ghent University Research Council in 2015-2022, and has been a panel member for the European Research Council since 2020. Since 2016, she is an elected member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB), where she also serves on the Board of Directors since 2023. In 2022 she was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Francqui Foundation awarded her a Collen-Francqui Research Professorship.