About
Dept. Plant, Soil & Microbial Sciences and Dept. Forestry
August 2016- present
Dr. Sakalidis is an Assistant Professor in Forest Pathology in the Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences and the Department of Forestry at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on the use of genomic tools in conjunction with traditional pathology tools to mitigate and respond to forest tree diseases (detection, identification, pathogenicity and population analysis). She is particularly interested in emerging endemic and exotic invasive pathogens.
Dr. Sakalidis received her PhD in her hometown of Perth, Western Australia at Murdoch University where she worked on pathogens that affected eucalyptus, baobab and mango trees. During this period she also spent time conducting research at the Forestry and Biotechnology Institute at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She spent the last five years working as a post-doctoral fellow on the TAIGA project at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada working on a Septoria canker and leafspot disease of poplar.
The Sakalidis lab is currently focusing on oak wilt, white pine and spruce decline but is always on the lookout for new problematic tree diseases in forested and urban settings.
Check out Dr. Sakalidis’s Google Scholar Page