Rate My Professor Judith Lichtenzveig

Judith Lichtenzveig is a Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow in the School of Agriculture and Environment at the University of Western Australia. Born in Argentina, she completed her higher education in Israel, earning a BSc in life sciences, an MSc focusing on interspecific compatibilities of climbing cacti of economic importance, and a PhD on the genetics and epidemiology of chickpea response to the fungal disease Ascochyta blight. Her early career included roles as a laboratory assistant and teaching assistant in microbiology, biochemistry, genetics, and statistics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1991 to 2003. From 2003 to 2010, she served as a Research Associate in joint positions at CSIRO Plant Industry, the Australian Centre for Necrotrophic Fungal Pathogens at Murdoch University, and the Centre for Legumes in Mediterranean Agriculture at UWA. Subsequent positions included Post-doctoral Research Associate at Curtin University (2010-2011) and Senior Lecturer and Lead Investigator in Pulse Pathology and Genetics at Curtin University (2012-2017).

Lichtenzveig's research centers on the genetics and evolution of grain legumes and their wild ancestors, molecular plant-pathogen interactions, co-evolution of plants and microbes, gene flow between annual species, introgressions from wild to cultivated crops, and the effects of temperature and light quality on pathogen responses and reproductive phenology. Her team works on pulse pathology and genetics, including chilling tolerance at the reproductive stage in chickpea, barriers to gene flow from wild Cicer into chickpea, and genome sequencing of field pea. She has secured funding from the Grains Research and Development Corporation for projects such as “Chilling tolerance at reproductive stage in chickpea” ($200,000, 2020) and “Barriers to gene flow from the wild Cicer into chickpea” ($175,150, 2018). Key publications include “A reference genome for pea provides insight into legume genome evolution” (Nature Genetics, 2019), “Pisum sativum (Pea)” (Trends in Genetics, 2020), “Evidence for the Application of Emerging Technologies to Accelerate Crop Improvement – A Collaborative Pipeline to Introgress Herbicide Tolerance Into Chickpea” (Frontiers in Plant Science, 2021), “Identification of a polyketide synthase gene responsible for ascochitine biosynthesis in Ascochyta fabae” (mSphere, 2019), and contributions to the “Draft genome sequence of chickpea (Cicer arietinum)” (Nature Biotechnology, 2013). As specialization coordinator for Genetics and Breeding, she is dedicated to enhancing teaching and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education.