I graduated from China Agricultural University in July, 2006 with a Bachelor Degree majoring in Plant protection. I was honoured to be the guest student in Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences for three years after completing my degree.

I enrolled as a PhD candidate with the Cooperative Research Centre for National Plant Biosecurity in January 2009. The program of my PhD proposal is quite exciting as I will explore the genetic diversity in endemic area of Russian wheat aphid (RWA) and also have the opportunity to research worldwide in the next three years. My project is CRC60111 [1]: Russian Wheat Aphid - PhD.

I am interested in the RWAs or Diuraphis noxia as they are one of the greatest biosecurity threats to the grains industry in Australia. Since the late twentieth century, RWA has spread through Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The grains industry in Australia is developing a RWA response plan based on pre-emptive breeding. However, RWA is known to develop virulent biotypes that can overcome host plant resistance, see project CRC400006 [2]: Russian Wheat Aphid. It is likely that the more genetically-diverse populations of RWA in endemic areas such as China represent a more abundant source of these virulent clones. Thus, I'm interested in how the population genetics of RWA in endemic area and their gene flow worldwide.