Roger Hellens

Roger Hellens joined QUT and the Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocomodities in March 2014 and he took up the role of Executive Director for the Institute for Future Environments in 2018. From 2000 to 2014 he worked in New Zealand at Plant&Food, Auckland in a number of roles including leading the institute’s genomics research and more recently the $10M p.a. kiwifruit breeding programme.

His research interests have spanned the development of red-fleshed apple and kiwifruit varieties and genome sequencing. He has maintained an interest in post-transcriptional gene regulation and this has become relevant in recent work to understand how vitamin C is regulatedregulation of vitamin C. Before his move to New Zealand, Professor Hellens worked at the John Innes Centre in Norwich UK. Here he developed the first genetic maps in pea (including his PhD on the molecular basis of Mendel’s white flower phenotype) and developed the pGreen.