Prof. Caixia Gao is Principal Investigator of the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (IGDB), Chinese Academy of Sciences. Prior to joining IGDB in 2009, she served as Research Scientist of DLF’s biotechnology group in Denmark, where she worked in plant genetic transformation and molecular biology. She completed her Ph.D. in Plant Genetics from China Agricultural University, Beijing, and her M.Sc. and B.S. degrees in Agronomy from Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou. Her current research area mainly deals with developing a highly efficient and robust CRISPR platform in plant cells to enable targeted genome editing as well as employing the developed platform for targeted gene mutagenesis, addition, editing and transcriptional modulation to identify and modify plants traits for high-quality, disease resistance and stress tolerance in crop species.