Esraa Alwan, from Syria, completed an MSc under the supervision of Francis Ogbonnaya at ICARDA, in association with Aleppo University, in Syria. Her research focused on finding new sources of stem rust resistance in wild tetraploid wheat. She is currently earning her PhD from Washington State University where she focuses on the identification and characterization of new sources of resistance to stripe rust and Hessian fly, using linkage maping, QTL mapping, and genome-wide association approaches.