Salih Yilmaz

Graduate Student - PhD Candidate

Salih completed his bachelor’s degree in 2015 in Crop Protection from Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University (Turkey) and Master of Science in 2017 in Integrated Pest Management of Mediterranean Fruit and Vegetable Crops from CHIEAM (International Center for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies) in Bari, Italy before joining the Batuman lab in 2019. His PhD research project focuses on the epidemiology of re/emerging virus and virus-like diseases on tomato crops in Florida.

His main research goals include molecular identification and characterization of diseases and improving detection methods for diseases and mutations by using newly developed biotechnological tools. Additionally, Salih is studying Florida tomato virus disease prevalence and anticipating disease emergence in the agro-ecological landscape based on virus metagenomic and network analysis.

In his free time, Salih enjoys local activities such trekking, photography, and swimming.