Saule Mussurova completed her BSc in Genetics at UCL, UK, and continued to MSc in Plant Genetics and Crop Improvement at the University of East Anglia. She has briefly worked as a junior researcher (Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan) and a start-up consultant (Fort Collins, Colorado, USA) before following her passion for science outreach and food sustainability by pursuing a PhD in Plant Science at KAUST. Her PhD thesis topic was wild rice genomics in which she studied the genomes of two wild rice species O. ridleyi and O. longiglumis to uncover how to leverage the wild rice gene pool to improve cultivated rice. When not running bioinformatics analysis, Saule can be found in the gym trying to deadlift 100 kg.