Molly earned her PhD in Plant Biology at Washington State in the laboratory of Dr. Mechthild Tegeder. Her dissertation research focused on determining the importance of amino acid allocation for nitrogen use efficiency, growth and production in Arabidopsis and peas. In addition, she was a Nitrogen Systems Policy Integrated Research and Education IGERT fellow, and is interested in the integration of environmental nitrogen systems science and public policy. She is currently the Torii lab manager, and works to implement efficient operating procedures and organization for the lab’s research programs.

Michal earned her PhD in Chemistry at the Hebrew university of Jerusalem. She studied biophysical characterization of bacterial proteins. In the Torii lab, Michal studies the mechanism of receptor kinase activation and signal transduction upon peptide ligand perception, and how they regulate various aspects of plant development.

Liangliang earned his Ph.D. in the lab of Dr. Yunhai Li at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He studied the role of ubiquitin receptor DA1 in leaf development in Arabidopsis. In the Torii lab, Liangliang is interested in the posttranslational modifications of ERECTA-family receptor kinases, as well as the relationship between peptide-receptor signaling and plant hormone during stomatal development.🌱

Eun-Deok earned her Ph.D. in the lab of Dr. Jeffery Chen at The University of Texas at Austin. She has studied an altered circadian rhythm through epigenetic regulation to growth vigor in Arabidopsis hybrids and allopolyploids. In the Torii lab, she studies how cell fate specification is determined during stomatal development using cutting-edge genomics and epigenomics approaches.

Pengfei received his Ph.D. degree in Plant Pathology at The Ohio State University, where he studied the molecular and genetic mechanism of plant-microbial interaction in rice🌾.In the Torii Lab, his research interest lies on the receptor-kinase signaling network in controlling stomatal development, from the ligand-receptor recognition to the downstream regulation of proliferation and differentiation of stomatal cells.

Scott is a graduate student in UW Physics Program. Scott applies mathematical and statistical tools from large-scale structure astrophysics (galaxies🌌) to study a biological scale of nearly thirty orders of magnitude smaller. He is interested in a quantitative modeling approach to studying how cell-cell signaling dynamics maintain stomatal patterning.