Prof Michael Udvardi hails from the Snowy Mountains of NSW (Cooma).  He earned his PhD in plant biochemistry in 1989 at the ANU in Canberra studying nutrient transport between legumes and rhizobia, which underpins symbiotic nitrogen fixation and sustainable agriculture.  After postdocs at Washington State University in the USA and at CSIRO Plant Industry in Canberra, he worked as Lecture then Senior Lecturer at the ANU from 1994-1998 before taking an Associate Professor position at the Max Plank Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Germany.  Between 2006 and 2021, he worked as Professor then Director of Plant Biology at the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation and finally as Chief Scientific Officer of the Noble Research Institute in the USA.  Throughout his research career he has focused on understanding symbiotic nitrogen fixation in legumes, using biochemical, molecular, genetic and genomic approaches in model, crop and forage legumes.  He has also worked on associative nitrogen fixation, nitrogen transport, regulation of senescence, and abiotic stress tolerance in plants. 

Michael was attracted to QAAFI because of its integrated approach to crop improvement and looks forward to adding his expertise in legume functional genomics to that of QAAFI and UQ colleagues in the areas of plant physiology, agronomy, modeling, and other disciplines, to develop nutrient-efficient, climate-resilient legumes for sustainable agriculture in the sub-tropics.