Ana Caño-Delgado

Dr. Ana I. Caño-Delgado is a CSIC Investigator and coordinator of the Plant Signaling & Development Program at the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) in Barcelona. She did a PhD in Biology at John Innes Centre (UK) and was a HFSPO Postdoctoral Fellow at Salk Institute (US). She is internationally recognized for publishing numerous high-impact scientific journals, has received awards in science and entrepreneurship and is an elected EMBO Member since 2016. At CRAG, she leads the Brassinosteroid signaling group supported by an ERC CoG grant to engineering crops able to grow on severe drought. These achievements are the results of two decades of studies in plant steroids hormones, Brassinosteroids, in which she pioneers the study of signaling mechanisms with cell-specificity. Her team discovered that vascular steroid receptors confer resistance to drought without penalizing growth. In the context of a climate emergency, Caño-Delgado is currently translating her scientific results to crops to ensure food security. In addition, Caño-Delgado is an engaged science communicator chasing two specific goals: encouraging women in science leadership and acceptance of gene edition tools in agriculture.