Pavel Kerchev graduated as a chemist but soon after that he realized that plants are much more fascinating and joined the Institute for Plant Physiology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He continued to explore further the molecular life of plants at INRA-Versailles during a one year Marie Curie training period, studying a mysterious phloem protein affecting sugar partitioning. He then started a PhD under the supervision of Christine Foyer split between the University of Leeds and the James Hutton Institute, during which he looked into the role of reactive oxygen species during aphid attack on plants. Following that he moved to the 'Metabolic reprograming' group of Johannes Hanson at the Umea Plant Science Center for a short postdoc. In 2012, he joined the Oxidative Stress Signaling group, where he is using a chemical genomics approach to study abiotic stress tolerance mechanisms. He is partially funded by the EU through the Pegasus and Omics@VIB Marie Curie Fellowships.
